BBC axe falls on Cantonese
THE BBC World Service's Cantonese broadcasts will be all but halved from the end of this month.
Devotees, however, will be able to find news bulletins on the Internet.
The broadcasts will be cut from an hour to 30 minutes daily as a result of a GBP5 million (HK$62.2 million) cut in the World Service's budget.
This will be partially compensated for by an extra one-hour programme for Hong Kong listeners at the weekend.
The BBC's Mandarin service will remain at 41/2 hours a day.
But Raymond Li, head of the Cantonese service, said he hoped that by becoming the first of the World Service's 45 languages to go on the Internet, more people would be able to listen to its programmes.
By May or June visitors to the Web site will be able to listen to programmes and download them into their computers, if these are fitted with a sound card.
Although there has been a modest growth in the number of people listening to the service on shortwave in the last two or three years, overall the number of people listening to shortwave transmissions around the world is in decline.
'Our target area for people on the Internet is Hong Kong, Singapore and Guangdong. We see it as one of the most technologically sophisticated areas in the world,' said Mr Li. 'It also means that we will get direct fast feedback from listeners, with them being able to e-mail us about the programmes. At the moment it can take a month for letters to reach us.' RTHK re-broadcasts the World Service's output on AM and FM frequencies, and has agreed to continue doing so after the handover. But shortwave transmissions to the area have begun from a new transmitter in Thailand.
