My TakeHong Kong's ATV deserves to be put out of its misery

Can someone please put Asia Television out of its misery?

More than 700 staff have been owed HK$15 million in wages since the end of November. This follows another delay in salary payment in October. News department staff are now threatening not to show up for work from January 1. Suspending the news service would breach the long-troubled broadcaster's licensing conditions, providing more than enough ground for regulators not to renew its licence, which will expire in less than a year.

The TV station is clearly on its last legs. This is despite billions of dollars being poured into it over the past five years. Indeed, the nasty tussle over control of the station between investor Wong Ching and shareholder Tsai Eng-meng, the Taiwanese snack tycoon, has significantly worsened things for ATV.

In a real free market, ATV would have died a richly deserved death and HKTV, headed by the cocky Ricky Wong Wai-kay, would have stepped in to fill its place. That may still happen as the reasons cited by the government for denying Wong a free-to-air broadcasting licence last year look more and more specious. Since a High Court ruling two weeks ago that two independent supervisors should be appointed to ATV's board, the preferred option is to save ATV by finding a white knight. MediaCorp of Singapore has been rumoured to be interested.

But the Communications Authority reportedly does not want to renew ATV's licence next year. Such decisions, however, have to be approved by the Chief Executive in Council. Beijing clearly wants the ever reliable if trashy ATV to continue. With HKTV, all bets are off as to its political orientation and programming contents.

The official argument for wanting ATV to continue is to encourage competition. But if that's true, why deny HKTV a licence? The government also said it was concerned about the financial sustainability of HKTV with its proposal for multiple channels. Well, ATV can't even pay its own staff!