Event Summary
On 10 October 2025, Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) ordered university libraries to remove all RTHK television programs from their collections by November 5, 2025, affecting physical formats (VCDs, DVDs) and digital platforms. Education University issued a “Program Removal Notice” to staff and students announcing the mandatory removal deadline. At Baptist University, the few remaining searchable RTHK programs are now inaccessible, while Hong Kong University’s digital archive of media content, which included RTHK programs like “Hong Kong Connection,” “Headliner,” “Below the Lion Rock,” “City Forum” and others until August 2025, has completely disappeared. RTHK stated it “currently does not provide copyright exemptions to any institutions” and that its policy provides programs from the past 12 months for public viewing, without denying the removal orders. Baptist University confirmed that when “authorization agreements terminate,” materials must be removed per agreements. This follows RTHK’s recent “major purge” of its Podcast One website, where programs like “The Pulse,” “Morning Brew,” ” This Week ” disappeared entirely, and “Hong Kong Connection” and “Legco Review” were reduced from over 1,300 episodes dating to 2010 to fewer than 100 episodes from the past two years. RTHK also ordered YouTube to remove citizen-backed archives and announced it would no longer upload programs to YouTube or podcasts to “concentrate traffic” on official platforms and “protect copyright.” This represents expansion of censorship from RTHK’s own platforms to university library collections, eliminating academic preservation of public broadcaster content.