The story
Rediffusion Television
ATV Home, in addition to Asia Television's history, traces back to Rediffusion Television, which was Hong Kong's first television service. The service launched on 29 May 1957, and a subscription fee of HK$25 was required to watch programming, which was considered to be expensive at the time.
On 30 September 1963, Rediffusion launched its Cantonese service, and the channel was christened "Rediffusion Television Cantonese Channel" (Chinese: 麗的映聲中文台). This would lay the groundwork for what will eventually become ATV Home.
On 1 February 1967, the channel was renamed "RTV-1" (Chinese: 麗的一台).
On 10 November 1969, Rediffusion was granted a free-to-air television broadcasting license for RTV-1, in addition to its English sister channel RTV-2 (Chinese: 麗的二台). However, RTV was beaten to launch by a competitor, Television Broadcasts Limited. This late arrival would have a major negative impact on new service's viewership, up until its eventual demise in 2016.
The channel in early September 1982 stopped airing the Japanese drama series The Rise of Shogun after airing two of its eight episodes, due to concerns over the rewritten history of Japan and glossing over occupation in the early 1940s.
Asia Television
On 24 September 1982, Rediffusion Television was bought out by a locally owned enterprise called Far East Group (Chinese: 遠東機構). The new owner renamed Rediffusion to Asia Television, and consequently, the channel was renamed "ATV Cantonese" (Chinese: 亞洲電視中文台).
On 2 February 1987, the channel was again renamed, to "ATV Gold" (Chinese: 亞洲電視黃金台).
Far East Group eventually sold its ATV holdings to local conglomerate Lai Sun Group, and the channel was renamed on 13 February 1989, to "ATV Home" (Chinese: 亞洲電視本港台). In 2015, former ATV executive Selina Chow revealed that the station's new name was supposed to be "ATV Hong Kong" (Chinese: 亞洲電視香港台), but the station was forced to scrap the name, in favor of ATV Home (Chinese: 亞洲電視本港台), after Secretary for Administrative Services and Information Peter Tsao opposed the name.
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In September 2015, ATV planned to rebrand the channel as ATV-1 Hong Kong (Chinese: 亞視一台 香港); the plan came to a premature end due to the end of its license.
From Wikipedia’s article on ATV Home, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3