About ATV World

ATV World

ATV World was the English-language free-to-air television channel of Asia Television (ATV) in Hong Kong. Sister channel to the Cantonese ATV Home, it was one of only two English-language terrestrial channels in Hong Kong, the other being its arch-rival TVB Pearl. ATV World broadcast from the ATV Enterprises office at 25–37 Dai Shing Street in the Tai Po Industrial Estate, in Hong Kong's New Territories. Like ATV Home, it traced its history to the launch of Rediffusion Television in 1957, took the ATV World name in 1989, and closed on 1–2 April 2016 when ATV's free-to-air licence expired without renewal.

Origins: Rediffusion's English service

ATV World's lineage began on 29 May 1957, when Rediffusion Television began as a cable-operated, subscription-based service and Hong Kong's first television station. The original service broadcast in two languages, and on 30 September 1963 it was split into a Cantonese channel and an English channel, the Rediffusion Television English Channel. On 1 February 1967 the two channels were renamed RTV-1 and RTV-2 respectively, the English service becoming RTV-2. The English channel carried imported programming from early on; Doctor Who, for example, aired on Rediffusion's English channel between 1966 and 1980. On 1 December 1973 Rediffusion was granted a free-to-air television broadcasting licence for its two channels and closed its cable television channels, taking the English service terrestrial.

Renamings: from RTV-2 to ATV World

On 24 September 1982 Rediffusion Television was bought out and renamed Asia Television, and the English channel became ATV English, alongside ATV Cantonese. The channel was renamed again on 2 February 1987 as ATV Diamond, while its Cantonese sister became ATV Gold. On 20 January 1989 ATV announced a further rebrand, and on 13 February 1989 the English channel became ATV World and the Cantonese channel became ATV Home, the names both channels kept until closure. The 1989 identity presented the two channels as a pair: Home for the Cantonese-speaking local audience, World for English-language and international programming.

Position in Hong Kong television

Hong Kong's free television long rested with two terrestrial stations, ATV and TVB, each transmitting two channels: TVB's Jade in Cantonese and Pearl mostly in English, and ATV's Home in Cantonese and World mostly in English. On the English-language stations, films on TVB Pearl and documentaries on ATV World attracted more viewers than other types of programming. Together the two stations produced some 550 hours of television each week, reaching a population of about 6.5 million viewers. ATV World was the smaller service of a smaller broadcaster — ATV's programming was not as popular, nor the station as wealthy, as TVB — but it gave Hong Kong's English-speaking audience, and viewers following English-language imports, a dedicated terrestrial home.

Programming: imported series and films

ATV World offered a variety of programmes, mostly from the United States, ranging from popular serial dramas and films to documentaries and educational shows. Series it aired included CSI: NY, V, Merlin, The Dresden Files, the documentary series Seconds From Disaster and Hunter Hunted, and the American current-affairs programme 60 Minutes. The channel's carriage of the American talk show Late Show with David Letterman ended on 1 January 2009, a decision that prompted a grassroots movement among viewers to bring the show back. In June 2012 ATV gained access to the London 2012 Olympic Games broadcast rights, and the Games were played on ATV World, giving the English channel a major international sporting event in its final years.

News in English

ATV World's flagship English news programme was the Main News and Weather Report at 7:30, produced by ATV News. ATV's news operation offered eight news programmes in all, six in Cantonese and two in English, the English pair including Newsline and Inside Story alongside the main bulletin, which was also billed as The Late News in listings of the channel's programmes. ATV World's schedule also relayed Xinwen Lianbo, the flagship news programme of mainland China's CCTV-1, reflecting the channel's mixed local and relayed content in its later years. ATV's news magazine production won awards at the New York Festivals, the Chicago International Television Competition and the Asian Television Awards.

Languages and transmission

While most of ATV World's programmes were broadcast in Hong Kong English, a few were in Mandarin, Korean or Japanese without English, and Mandarin and Korean programmes were available on the channel at off-peak hours. The channel broadcast around the clock as a multi-language service: in its analogue version its programmes were transmitted in NICAM stereo, and in its digital version with multiple AC-3 audio streams, allowing viewers to select among the languages a programme carried. That multilingual flexibility matched the channel's role as Hong Kong's international window within the free-to-air system.

The final years

ATV World's last decade was shaped by its parent company's decline. ATV changed ownership in 2010 and attempted to rebalance its channels away from drama towards current affairs, news and talk, a strategy that produced further financial losses and internal conflict. On 1 April 2015 the Hong Kong Executive Council announced that ATV's free television licence would not be renewed, with a year's notice before its expiry. In early March 2016 the company's provisional liquidator laid off the last 400 employees, and the final programme shown across ATV was a replay of the 2013 Miss Asia Pageant.

Closure in 2016

ATV World closed with ATV's other terrestrial channels on 1–2 April 2016, after 59 years of broadcasting history counted from Rediffusion's 1957 launch. Radio Television Hong Kong took over the two analogue channels of ATV and launched its own television broadcast on the frequencies. ATV itself announced in December 2017 that it would continue as a digital and satellite broadcaster and through subscription-based internet streaming, but the terrestrial ATV World channel was not revived. It is remembered as Hong Kong's second English-language free channel: the home of imported American drama, British series, documentaries and English news for the city's international audience across the analogue and early digital eras.

The digital transition

ATV World lived through Hong Kong's change from analogue to digital terrestrial television. In January 2007 Hong Kong's two terrestrial broadcasters, TVB and ATV, agreed to adopt China's home-grown digital terrestrial television standard for the territory's digital switchover, and ATV's channels were carried in the new digital multiplexes alongside their analogue versions, with ATV World's digital service offering multiple AC-3 audio streams in place of analogue NICAM. The channel thus spent its final nine years as a simulcast across two transmission systems, an English-language service of a broadcaster whose resources were shrinking even as the technology around it modernised.

Legacy

ATV World's story encapsulates the arc of Hong Kong English-language broadcasting in the terrestrial age. Created in 1963 when a bilingual cable service split by language, it survived the move to free-to-air broadcasting, three corporate identities and four channel names before settling as ATV World in 1989. Its schedule — American network drama, documentaries, the Late Show with David Letterman, Olympic sport and a nightly English bulletin — served expatriate and local English-speaking viewers who were a minority of the Hong Kong audience but a defining part of the city's international character. Its closure in 2016, alongside ATV Home, ended the two-station, four-channel structure that had organised Hong Kong free television since the 1970s.