Beleaguered broadcaster ATV says it is willing to hold talks with Hong Kong Television Network boss Ricky Wong Wai-kay over his proposal to air HKTV shows on the station. The development came yesterday, ahead of a 5pm deadline for ATV to respond to the offer. An ATV spokesman said the station's executive director, Ip Ka-po, had a telephone conversation with Wong, saying that ATV's board believed there was room for negotiation over the offer. He said Ip hoped to meet Wong to discuss details of the deal, including the programme content, time slots and prices. It also emerged later that ATV is seeking a monthly guarantee of HK$10 million from HKTV - double the figure proposed by Wong. HKTV announced on the Hong Kong stock exchange that it had received the written response from ATV and deadline will now be extended to 5pm next Monday. Last week, HKTV proposed to air 1,000 hours of its drama series and infotainment and variety programmes on ATV until the end of this year. The proposed deal included airing shows four hours a day on ATV Home and its digital Channel 11. It said it would handle advertising sales in return for a 50 per cent cut of the advertising revenue generated from the broadcasts of its shows. In addition, ATV would be guaranteed HK$5 million per month. Ip said yesterday he hoped that guarantee could be raised to HK$10 million, as ATV needs almost HK$15 million a month to operate and pay wages. Last week, Ip wrote in his blog that the HKTV deal was questionable as media reports showed there had been a recent decline in the number of hits registered by HKTV's online shows. "If these programmes are aired on our platform with this trend, how will the ratings be?" Ip asked. "Will these [shows] be able to attract enough advertising to cover the fee to use the channel?" But HKTV figures showed the average daily viewership through live streaming and video-on-demand had gone up from 144,000 hits at the beginning of March to 177,000 last week. That is 2.7 times more than ATV's average weekday prime-time viewership of 64,660, or one rating point. This month, the government decided to terminate ATV's free-to-air licence next April after the station failed to come up with a restructure proposal on time. It intended to have RTHK take over ATV's analogue spectrum until the analogue switch-off date in 2020, once ATV ceases operating on or before April 1 next year. Although ATV holds a separate fixed-carrier licence allowing it to transmit free-TV signals, the Communications Authority yesterday said it would take back all of ATV's spectrum on April 2 - despite the station pleading for it to honour the original expiry date of November 2018. The authority said its decision was in the public interest.