The New Year picture looks bleak on the television front for broadcast journalists who will soon be out of work.
China Entertainment Television has just announced it is laying off 100 of its staff. CNBC is closing its Hong Kong headquarters with the loss of 150 jobs as part of its merger with rival Asia Business News. And Wharf Cable's English-language news service is being axed, with 22 redundancies.
Its last broadcast will be on the evening of January 11 - ironically the 40th birthday of its managing editor Peter Maize, a father of two who is also losing his job.
What is on your mind? The fact that our operation is winding down and we have barely a week to go. Even though we've known for three months we are closing down, the attitude of my staff has been great. We've had some bitter struggles with the company over the last few months, but the staff's level of professionalism has been extraordinary.
So is the outlook bleak for English-language broadcasting now? Speaking frankly, I feel the conventional wisdom that all the gweilos would be going home after 1997 and that nobody needs English language news any more is a misperception.
I've always felt there is a definite market for English language programming in Hong Kong. There are more expatriates in Hong Kong now than ever. As we approached 1997 more and more gweilos were coming here and it wasn't all guys who wanted to work in bars.
So what went wrong? We were closed only because the company was losing money and just wanted to lose a little less. It was not saying we were not any good. That is proved otherwise - we've just won first place in the Asian Television Awards for our handover coverage and we've just won three awards from the New York Film and TV Festival.
