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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, Mr Gregory So, on Asia Television Limited (ATV) at a media session in the Legislative Council Complex yesterday (March 3):
Reporter: Mr So, is it a surprise to you that ATV is winding up earlier than expected?
Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development: I think everyone with an interest in ATV has seen what they have been going through in the past. Nevertheless, we have to respect the system in terms of our law. We can only do what we can in accordance with the law. Given the fact that ATV's licence was not renewed last year, according to the law, we have to give them 12 months of notice before the expiry of that licence. Therefore, immediately after the decision was made not to renew ATV licence, we have formed a cross-bureaux working group, headed by our bureau, looking into precisely this, how we could have the transition to be effected as smoothly as possible. What happened in terms of ATV is really something not controllable by the Government but we could do our best to minimise the interruption of services. And I have just mentioned this in Chinese that the RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong) will roll out the service around?March 10?which is just next week. You could?well appreciate the difficulties involved in rolling out the service early. I must thank the colleagues in RTHK who have done so well in making this happen.?
Reporter: Do they have enough resources to bring this service earlier??
Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development: We will ensure that they will have the adequate resources to do what they need to do. But I have to say, in terms of the broadcasting sites, we will be liaising with the provisional liquidator. We did have some problem in communication with ATV earlier. But now with the provisional liquidator stepping in, I am hopeful that communication will be improved.?
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Friday, March 4, 2016
Issued at HKT 00:18
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