RTHK

Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) is the public broadcasting service of Hong Kong. GOW, the predecessor to RTHK, was established in 1928 as the first broadcasting service in Hong Kong. As a government department under the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau of the Hong Kong Government that directly supported by annual government funding, RTHK's educational, entertainment, and public affairs programmes are broadcast on its eight radio channels and five television channels, as well as commercial television channels.

The British Hong Kong Government launched its first radio broadcasting station, known as "GOW", on 20 June 1928, with a starting staff of only six people. Several name changes occurred over the next few years, and it eventually became known as "Radio Hong Kong" (RHK) (香港廣播電台) in 1948.

In 1949, broadcasting operations were taken over by the Government Information Services (GIS), but by 1954, RHK had managed to establish itself as an independent department. Up until 1966, the radio station was only on-air for three periods during the day; at morning, lunchtime, and evening. This was partly due to many of the presenters being part-time freelancers who had to fit their radio appearances in with their normal daily working schedule.

In 1969, the station's medium wave AM transmitting station was moved from a waterfront site in Hung Hom to the summit of Golden Hill in the New Territories. Although the new transmitters were much more powerful, the mountain-top site proved unsuitable for medium wave transmissions and reception in some areas has remained problematic ever since. In March 1969, RHK moved its headquarters to new purpose-built studios located at Broadcasting House (廣播大廈) in Kowloon Tong.

A Public Affairs Television Unit was established in 1970 to produce TV programmes for required broadcast by independent channels. At that time, RHK did not have its own television broadcast transmitters.

In 1973, RHK set up its own radio newsroom. Prior to this, all news had been prepared by Government Information Services staff. Until 1969, headlines were sent to the studios every half-hour by teleprinter from the GIS headquarters in Central District, while the three daily full bulletins were hand-delivered by a messenger. This arrangement became impractical following the move to the new studios in 1969, so initially a GIS newsroom was set up in Broadcasting House. This arrangement also proved unsatisfactory and RHK's own journalists, who until then had been confined to producing magazine programmes, took over the entire news operation.

In 1976, the station's name was changed to "Radio Television Hong Kong" (RTHK) to reflect its new involvement in television programme production. In the same year, it began to produce educational television programmes for schools after absorbing the previously independent Educational Television Unit. The corporation started drawing plans to release video tapes of popular Hollywood movies for the emerging home video market in 1980, at a time when few Hong Kong families owned a VCR.

In 1986, RTHK headquarters moved across the road to the former Commercial Television studios, which were renamed Television House. The station's first news and financial news channel, Radio 7, was established in November 1989.