I refer to the letter headlined, 'Cable viewers getting raw deal' (South China Morning Post, February 16) and thank Susanna Chan Shuk-ying for her comments. I wish to point out that the decision to replace International Channel with Jet TV has nothing to do with cost. As pointed out by Miss Chan, it is the policy to enable our subscribers 'to have a good balance of foreign news and entertainment programmes' that motivated our decision to introduce the change. Various subscriber surveys tell us the displaced programmes were not well watched and we decided to redeploy the airtime - a finite resource - for other programmes instead. Irrespective of the latest change, we still offer some 70 hours of international news every day (including CNNI - 24 hours, BBC World - 24 hours, CNBC - 24 hours, and so on), many more hours compared to the other television stations. Miss Chan will be pleased to learn that yet another 24-hour English channel, Discovery Channel, has replaced Horizon Channel, further enhancing our English programme offerings. Nevertheless, Miss Chan's views will be taken into consideration when we next review our programming line-up. GARMEN CHAN External Affairs Director Cable TV
