Chung Wai Ming Recalls His Sixty Years in Radio

Clip5-Joining Radio Hong Kong Fulltime, 1970

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In 1970, the Hong Kong Radio Broadcasting Unit of the USIS closed down. I had a choice to work either in film, radio or television and I finally decided to take up the appointment as Programme Director in Radio Hong Kong. I felt that since I had already tried working at different stations and I wasn’t young any more, it would be more stable working in the civil service. After an interview, I was offered the job. After my first participation in a radio play (in 1947), I finally joined Radio Hong Kong formally as a member of its staff.

Working at Radio Hong Kong was not easy in the beginning. There was a lot of competition coming from Commercial Radio, and because radio dramas were popular, they were produced on a large scale. Every week, we produced 52 half-hour programmes that covered many genre, including detective stories, period drama, family drama, romances, etc. In addition there was a one-hour programme based on some piece of world literature, such as adapting Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. It really was a tight recording schedule was.

Television had a great impact on radio at the time, and with the decline of Cantonese opera, the Director of Radio Hong Kong, Chow Nai-yeung, organized the Lung Cheung Cantonese Opera Troupe. One of its aims was to maintain an audience for Cantonese opera and create future fans, and another was to close the distance between radio actors and the audience. The troupe performed all over Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, and people were enthusiastic to see opera performed by radio broadcasters, and showed a lot of support for us.

We started recording at nine every morning till one, when we had a lunch break. We resumed work at two till five. After dinner we continued recording again, till nine. This went on day after day. In the event that the opera troupe was performing, radio recording would stop at five in the afternoon. After dinner, we put on our make-up and took off to got ready for the show. The performance went on till around ten when we could go home and get ready for bed. The next morning, we started work at nine all over again. There was hardly time to read the script…I worked in Radio Hong Kong till 1991 when I was sixty, and retired. But I didn’t really stop working. It so happened that Radio 7 received a sponsorship, and I was asked to stay on to help with the work, and so I have continued till today. Later, when Radio 7 became a Putonghua station, I switched to Radio 5 and took over programmes for the elderly. The programme “Evergreen”, started in 1981, is aired every Sunday and I am still hosting it.

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