HONG KONG Bidders are lining up to buy a piece of Television Broadcasts (TVB), Hong Kong's leading, and first ever, free-to-air commercial broadcaster, which went on air in 1967.

The iconic company, the training ground for many of the region's best-known filmmakers and performers, would be a feather in the cap of any group that bought it.

But the entertainment and investment communities are mulling how much it is worth today -- after all, Hong Kong with its population of 7 million is a pimple beside the ever more muscular China and its 1.3 billion souls -- and what could be done with it?

Company is controlled by Run Run Shaw, the 100-year-old magnate who also founded the Shaw Brothers film empire, and his wife, Mona Fong.

A month ago, the company dashed off a notice to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange saying sale talk was "incorrect and speculative." That convinced absolutely nobody, as TVB also acknowledged that negotiations were under way concerning a 75% stake in Shaw Brothers, which in turn owns a 26% stake in TVB.

Institutions including Goldman Sachs have since published research notes about the possible scenarios, and the Financial Times, wrongly, proclaimed that a deal had been done.

Nevertheless, the shadow-boxing has been a useful exercise. First to emerge were private equity firms including Carlyle, Bain Capital and Blackstone. In a fit of patriotism, Yeung Kwok-keung, a property magnate with substantial interests in Southeast China, put himself forward as a bidder determined to keep the company out of the hands of foreigners.

However, local financial papers report three other property tycoons, including Hui Wing-mau, PCCW chairman Richard Li Tzar-kai and Yau Tak-kan, former boss of smaller free-to-air net ATV, are all also in the running.

Banking sources say that Yeung and Hui are trying to raise loans as Shaw, in a spate of succession planning and late-life philanthropy, wants to be paid in cash rather than some other company's shares. The pair are reportedly close to clinching the deal.

Financiers like the idea of building on the company's brand, especially taking it into China -- only HK$184 million ($23.7 million) of its $560 million 2007 revenue came from the mainland.

Some 60% comes from Hong Kong, with the rest coming from program and channel sales in parts of the world where there are large ethnic Chinese populations. This month it signed a deal with Eutelsat for carriage of TVBS-Europe and four new specialty nets.

Like most foreign channels, TVB is largely banished from China, though it has access to cable networks in the Cantonese-speaking Guangdong province. That could change with the help of high-placed, pro-China business friends, such as Yeung and his even richer pal Lee Shau-kee of Henderson Land.

Analysts suggest that other bidders could emerge.

"A lot of China players are trying to diversify out of China. TVB's branding and history are very valuable," said one analyst.

The value of the library is up for debate. The company does not maintain the volume of artists under management and original productions that it did 20 years ago, which means its library is aging and becoming less contemporary.

Sources suggest that library could be mined for remakes in the way that the Shaw film library was expected to be. The Shaw library was sold in 2000 to Astro All Asia Networks, the pay TV empire controlled by Malaysian billionaire Ananda Krishnan.

Renamed Celestial Pictures, it has restored many of the films, struck a string or video and TV license deals and launched two TV nets -- but the remakes have not been forthcoming.

"TVB's influence in Southeast Asia has been dwindling over the last decade. Twenty years ago, they were the kings, their content traveled all over Asia," said one financier, who claims to have weighed a bid and walked away.

"It is only partly their own fault. There is a new audience today and a new generation of local producers who were brought up on Hong Kong shows, but are now doing it for themselves and in ways that are more suited to their local markets. MediaCorp in Singapore is particularly active."

One of the aspects that has gotten the finance and entertainment folk in such a froth is that large entertainment assets come on to the market so rarely.

ATV changed hands last year when it was sold to Softrak, a media investment company at one stage backed by Dutch investment-banking group ING.

Richard Li was stumped by the intervention last year of Chinese government-backed investors when he tried to sell his PCCW group, which spans phones and IPTV-based paybox NOW TV.