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Television Broadcasts will lay off about 300 staff amid the latest restructuring of its broadcasting and e-commerce businesses to save up to HK$160 million.
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TVB executive chairman Thomas Hui To said structural adjustments are required to maintain market leadership. And such moves will inevitably affect the company's staffing structure, according to an internal letter yesterday.
About 200 employees will be sacked as the broadcaster plans to merge its J2 and TVB Finance, Sports & Information channels to create the TVB+ channel, according to a filing yesterday.
Currently, J2 offers content aimed at a young audience while the other provides news and programs mainly related to finance and sports.
The new channel will also be targeted at young viewers, TVB said.
Apart from dramas and variety shows it will link free content with interactive material on digital platforms.
After the restructuring TVB will see the total number of channels it operates down to four from five - namely Jade, TVB News, Pearl and TVB+.
Some of the finance-related content such as programs related to the Hong Kong stock and property markets will also be distributed into Jade.
The overall production of programming hours will be cut as TVB reallocates production resources across the four-channel lineup.
TVB will continue to invest strongly in prime-time production but reduce production budgets for fringe-hour content and discontinue any programs that fall short of their desired audience or commercial impact.
It expects to save a further HK$100 million in content costs next year as TVB is on track to achieve a HK$260 million annual cost-savings target by the end of this year. TVB yesterday submitted its application to the Communications Authority of Hong Kong as the restructuring plan requires approval.
The broadcaster expects the result of the application to be known within the first quarter of next year.
But within the scope permitted by its current license TVB will begin adjusting its content and programming in phases starting next month.
The behind-the-camera action comes as TVB's new broadcasting drama, The Queen of News, gained increasing popularity in the mainland.
And Hui noted that drama production will bring the group considerable revenue in the fourth quarter.
TVB is also cutting about another 100 jobs after merging two online shopping platforms, Ztore and Neigbuy. That will result in Neigbuy becoming the dominant operation.
The group expects to eliminate about HK$50 million to HK$60 million in annual fixed costs and overheads from its e-commerce business.
The Ztore website and mobile app will cease to operate on December 19 and the e-commerce reorganization will be completed by the end of next month.
TVB expects to see substantial growth in gross merchandise value for Neigbuy over the next three to five years.
To bring down costs, TVB had earlier seen a 6.6 percent drop in the number of employees to 3,599 as of June compared to the end of last year, according to its interim report.
caroline.zheng@singtaonewscorp.com
