Hong Kong relaxes regulations on TV and radio advertising

A one-month public consultation was conducted by the CA back in June 2020 to collect views from the general public and the broadcasting industry/licensees regarding the proposed relaxation of the measures. Based on the outcome of the consultation, the CA announced the following changes:

Real property advertisements

• Advertisements of real properties that are regulated under other regulatory regimes (Estate Agents Ordinance and Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Ordinance) will be exempted from substantiation requirements as currently prescribed under the TV Advertising Code and the Radio Advertising Code.
• For advertisements concerning real properties situated outside Hong Kong, it is no longer a requirement to obtain confirmation from a firm of solicitors/attorneys registered and recognised in the country/region where the real property is located that housing loan is available to prospective purchasers.        
• To safeguard the interests of the audience of such advertisements, the CA requires that such advertisements should carry messages to remind audience to consider carefully or seek professional advice before making any property purchase decisions.                       

Live and related sports events programmes

• To allow broadcasters greater flexibility in inserting advertising material for sports and live events, the CA now permits the insertion of in-programme advertising material in sports events programmes and exempts such advertising materials from being counted towards the aggregate advertising limit applicable to free-to-air TV.
• However, there are certain conditions/restrictions as to the time, size, frequency, location of display of sponsorship references (i.e. the sponsor's name/trade marks/slogans etc.). For example:
  • there can only be one sponsorship reference of one sponsor at any one time;
  • the size of the sponsorship references should not exceed 5% of the TV screen;
  • the sponsorship references should not appear too frequently; and
  • there are prescribed time limits on the duration of the sponsorship references (the TV Advertising Code sets out further details on these prescribed time limits).

Broadcast hours of mature programmes

• The CA takes the view that TV viewership among children and young viewers after 11:00pm is relatively low and therefore proposes to advance the start of broadcast hours for mature programmes from 11:30pm to 11:00pm.
• The public's views on this were divided. There were criticisms as to there being no data supporting a significant decrease in the number of children viewers after 11:00pm. With the COVID situation, parents may be more lenient as to imposing TV screen time for children. However, people supporting the revised policy argued that since there are now 12 free-to-air TV programme channels and the amount of available online content, there should not be a significant impact on children viewers in advancing the broadcast hours of mature programmes.

All in all, these revised policies should provide the TV and radio licensees with more flexibility in advertising contents and scheduling programmes.  These revised policies also reflect the CA's continued willingness to modernise its TV and radio advertising regimes (e.g. see our previous article on: Hong Kong relaxes regulations on product placement).

Authored by Eugene Low and Catharine Lau