HONG KONG – The Hong Kong government has finally found a candidate to fill the hot seat as topper of pubcaster Radio Television Hong Kong.
On Thursday it announced that Franklin Wong Wah-kay will take up the long vacant Director of Broadcasting post with effect from Friday.
The 65 year old, who started at RTHK in the mid 1960s, developed a late career taste for international and commercial roles and played a major role reforming Singapore's pubcaster MediaCorp.
Wong will have to quickly tackle the Hong Kong government over what kind of role the pubcaster should have. The government has in the past year said that it wants a public broadcaster, but has gone as far as to suggest setting up an alternative organization. It regards RTHK, which is legally part of the civil service, as sclerotic and occasionally rebellious.
"The government has announced that it is to review public broadcasting. We will take part in that debate and aim to find consensus, find what is best for the viewing and listening public," Wong said. "There is a framework agreement with the government which ensures (editorial) freedom. I will see that it is maintained and upheld by RTHK."
Wong will also have deal with issues of staff morale and reforms of time-warped working practices such as how editorial staff should charge operational expenses, a matter that has recently landed multiple RTHK staffers with fraud convictions. On this, Wong said that he would "guarantee every cent of government money is accounted for."
Wong started at RTKH with roles as radio announcer, commentator and producer and was involved in the establishment of the new television service of RTHK in early 1970s.His overseas career took him to production controller at Astro Malaysia (1997 to 1998) and CEO of Singapore's MediaCorp Studios (2000 to 2003) and most recently as a docu producer with Beijing-based CultureLink, a company he founded in 2004.
In July last year RTHK's head of programming Chu Pui-hing resigned over a sex scandal, but the government had to re-advertise the job when it could not find a suitable candidate. That was regarded as the government changing the rules in order to favor a particular candidate – who it turned out thought the HK$1.9 million ($245,000) a year salary was beneath him anyway.
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