ATV’s last trump card – what happens to its rights to broadcast in mainland China?
The station struck valuable deals in the early 2000s to distribute its channels over the border in Guangdong
With ATV vanishing from the screens in Hong Kong and having sold most of its classic TV series to raise money, there has been much speculation on what will happen to the lucrative landing rights of its programmes in the Pearl River Delta region – its one remaining trump card.
While the station said the issue had yet to be dealt with, industry insiders were questioning the practical value of retaining or acquiring these rights as the fast-growing mainland television is teeming with programming choices and people appear to have lost interest in Hong Kong’s mostly unvarying local productions.
ATV and rival TVB separately won the rights to distribute their Cantonese and English-language channels to neighbouring Guangdong through regional TV networks in the early 2000s. The Hong Kong broadcasters were then supposed to enter into content licensing agreements with individual local networks in the southern province.
Vultures circling ATV’s mainland China landing right
A spokesman for TVB told the Post that the station had long-standing arrangements for channel distribution with Guangdong’s TV stations and received a fixed amount of fees in return every year.
He did not specify figures but an industry source said TVB was paid about 60 million yuan (HK$72 million) a year. The source said he was unaware that ATV, with equal right of entry to the Pearl River Delta, signed similar licensing pacts in the region.
Ip Ka-po, former executive director of ATV, stressed the landing rights were still useful.
ATV had secured landing rights in Guangdong in 2002, the veteran TV executive told the Post.
