Government ignored advice on TV licences, says regulator

Communications regulators accused the government of ignoring their advice and failing to respond to them before making the controversial decision not to award a free-to-air TV licence to Ricky Wong Wai-kay's Hong Kong Television Network.

The Communications Authority - the statutory body that regulates broadcasting and communications policy - dropped the bombshell as the main protagonists in the row, Wong and commerce minister Greg So Kam-leung, faced off in the Legislative Council yesterday.

In a document submitted to Legco's panel on information technology and broadcasting, the authority said it had recommended that Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying issue free TV licences to all the applicants - newcomer HKTV and PCCW's Hong Kong Television Entertainment Company and iCable's Fantastic Television, both established operators.

The seven-page submission also revealed that the government stopped communicating with the authority in February and said regulators were never asked to consider the now controversial "gradual and orderly approach" to issuing licences, which the government cited as its main defence for rejecting Wong.

Some lawmakers were stunned by the authority's account and said that had it arrived a day earlier, Thursday's failed motion to invoke Legco's special powers to probe the TV licence row might have passed.

Caught off-guard by the authority's intervention, So reiterated previous answers. His deputy, Joe Wong, said the chief executive was not obliged to seek the consent of the regulator before making a decision on behalf of Exco. On Thursday it was revealed that a number of senior officials questioned the wisdom of departing from the long-held policy of issuing three licences.

Civic Party lawmaker Ronny Tong Ka-wah said yesterday that the authority's submission added weight to the legal argument that the government may have made procedural mistakes.