DBC radio begins 'revival campaign' after announcing closure

After announcing it was going off the air last week, Digital Broadcasting Corporation has bounced back for a seven-day “revival campaign”, co-founder Albert Cheng King-hon said on Monday morning.

Cheng was in a combative mood on Monday morning – the first day of the campaign – hitting back against a letter from the government asking him to explain the campaign.

“Our politically appointed officials do not know what loyalty is. So they do not understand this campaign,” Cheng said.

“We will follow broadcasting law to host our programmes, only that our hosts have loyalty and refuse to be paid. This is what Greg So Kam-leung would never understand,” he said, referring to the secretary of the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau, who had asked for the clarification.

When the four-month-old station said it was going off the air last week, announcers said that some volunteers wanted to work this week without salary, to keep the station on the air for seven more days. Cheng praised their loyalty then as well as on Monday morning.

Another host, former lawmaker Andrew Cheng Kar-foo, said the station’s licence was still valid, and it was not illegal for it to continue broadcasting.

The lawyer said the station had raised more than HK$1.2 million from October 11-13 to support its legal expenses, but was still far from its target HK$10 million. He is helping the station handle a legal dispute with its chairman, Bill Wong Cho-bau.