Backed by a HK$1 billion war chest, Cable TV becomes Hong Kong’s latest free-to-air network
Licence for Fantastic TV runs to 2028, with Cantonese channel to start within a year
Hong Kong broadcaster Cable TV has been given a licence to run its free-to-air network Fantastic Television up to 2028, with the first Cantonese programmes set to air within a year.
The Executive Council’s grant to i-Cable Communications brings the number of free-to-air services in the city to three.
Fantastic TV will join TVB and PCCW’s ViuTV, which launched in April, days after troubled network Asia Television went off air.
Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Greg So Kam-leung said the new entrant would “foster further development of the broadcasting and creative industries”.
He said viewers were “set to benefit from a wider choice of programmes through the additional investment in programming and local content production and increasing competition”.
The licence runs for 12 years, to be reviewed around 2022.
Fantastic TV welcomed the decision and said it looked forward to providing Hong Kong with quality programmes. It has proposed hiring the fixed network operated by Cable TV to transmit the free service.
Viewers using communal aerial broadcast distribution (CABD) systems, after upgrading their building’s CABD system by connecting it with Cable TV’s fixed network, will receive the free TV signals with Integrated Digital Television sets or digital terrestrial television set-top boxes.
A Cantonese channel will launch within a year and an English one in two. I-Cable chairman Stephen Ng Tin-hoi has pledged to invest HK$1 billion in Fantastic in its first six years.
A senior staffer at Cable TV’ s news department said there had been no discussion of new programming prior to Tuesday’s announcement. “No one talked about having to prepare for a new channel, its almost as if management was no longer pursuing the licence,” the source said.
I-Cable and PCCW were granted licences “in principle” in 2013, but a bid by telecoms mogul Ricky Wong Wai-kay’s Hong Kong Television Network was denied, sparking public outcry.
Additional reporting by Stuart Lau
