No Plan To Lay Off Staff: I-Cable

The CEO of i-Cable Communications, Stephen Wong, on Wednesday said there is no plan to lay off any employees following the firm’s decision to terminate its pay-TV service from June.

“We are removing programmes produced overseas. We’ve not stopped our own productions – including news and business; and we are adding new programmes like variety shows,” he told an RTHK programme.

Wong said that because there’s still a big demand for Cantonese content, i-Cable is actually hiring new staff and investing more resources to expand its free TV service and online content.

“So locally produced programmes haven’t changed and we don’t need to make big changes to our manpower. On the contrary, we need more help.”

He said pay-TV service providers around the world are facing difficulties, noting the patronage of Cable TV’s pay-television channels has dropped from a high of one million to around 680,000.

I-Cable's share price surged by almost 45 percent at one point after it resumed trading on Wednesday.

Commerce minister Algernon Yau, meanwhile, reiterated that i-Cable’s decision to surrender its pay-TV licence was purely a commercial one.

"I think the market itself will tell whether the pay-TV market is necessary. The whole broadcasting landscape changes from time to time, it's all subject to commercial decisions," he told reporters at a separate event.

The Consumer Council’s chief executive, Gilly Wong, said the watchdog has received two inquiries since i-Cable’s announcement.

She said the council has been told that any remaining balance in a pay-TV contract will go to other services that a customer has subscribed to, or will be refunded if there’s none.

Wong urged consumers to refer back to the service contract if in doubt.

“It is always good to take the moment to dig out the contract and refresh your memory about how long you have engaged into the contract, the duration, to what extent you have already used the service, and also the payment etc,” she said.

“So that when you engage with their customer service personnel about the exact arrangements, you know the details right away.”

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