The CCP is obsessed with control over media content and they have built a huge industry around it that is increasingly spreading its tentacles across the globe.
Does anyone here believe they haven't fully embedded themselves in the local networks, used not only by foreign businesses (lucrative info there), foreign diplomats (and their confidential communiques) and of course all the local "subversive elements" who've refused to confess undying love for the China=CCP equation.
Apart from personal satellite TV systems (still potentially crackable), BBC's feeble free-to-air AM transmission of the World Service has been the only independent 24h news channel, available in english to anyone and anywhere without the possibly of being tracked.
English is still, 20 years after the handover, an official language in HK and widely used at that. Purge the english language and what is left of HK's international status?
Interestingly the CPP didn't bother replacing the BBC relay feed with the own english-language propaganda but switched directly to pekingese.
And oh, how the once-formidable have fallen.
Someone from HK, an expat, sent an "absolutely-not-against-china-in-any-way" question about this switcheroo to BBC's World Have Your Say programme and... the programme was unable to get anyone from the BBC to comment!