Hong Kong’s three broadcasters have licence obligations to air some of their radio services in English and other languages.

For Metro Broadcast, English programming is handled by Michael Vincent, who runs Metro Plus 1044AM.

Asia Radio Today caught up with him and discovered that the other minority languages make the most impact on the station’s bottom line.

1. First off, tell us how you came to be in Hong Kong.

I started my radio experience about 30 years ago in college radio in the Philippines and then came to Hong Kong in 1989. Previously I worked for Hong Kong Commercial Radio and these days I’m Programming Director of English channel Metro Plus.

Eighty percent of our programmes are in English but we feature several other languages, with shows aimed at communities from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and India.

Every year we also broadcast special programmes for Muslims during Ramadan.

2. Why are the minority language shows so important?

About 80 percent of revenue for Metro Plus comes from our ethnic programming. It amounts to as much as 10 million Hong Kong dollars per year. So this is the revenue that helps keep the station afloat.

3. Isn’t that strange that English doesn’t make money?

First of all Hong Kong is a pecular market for radio. As well as being a predominantly Cantonese speaking territory, there isn’t a very large drive-time audience during the morning/evening rush hour, like other countries.

Also broadcasting on AM is not easy in this day and age and isn’t helped by Hong Kong’s terrain.

But the ethnic shows are very popular and the business model has been very successful.

4. What else is unique about the Hong Kong market?

Well if you look at the most popular media in order, they would be newspapers, then television followed by huge LED screens on buildings in the streets.

Nowadays people are also focused on smartphones and tablets, especially when they commute, due to the availability and price of data services in the territory.

5. Do you see an opportunity for Metro Broadcast to move into the mainland?

We can be heard in the mainland and in Macau although we aren’t technically allowed to broadcast there. If our signals were to leak substantially, the Chinese broadcast authorities would tell us to turn down our signal. However we can’t do the same to them and Beijing Radio can be heard loud and clear in Hong Kong on FM.

I think for now achieving revenue from mainland China is just a pipe dream.

6. Metro has made a major commitment to DAB digital radio. Tell us more about that.

Metro won three DAB+ radio licences. One of them is a simulcast of our business channel Metro Finance.

Another, a Chinese entertainment channel, launched in September this year.

A third channel should be launched by September 2014.

Based on the language requirement of our licence, there could be as much as 60-70 percent of English language programming on the third DAB channel but that’s still to be confirmed.