Yesterday a reliable source stated over half of TVB's behind-the-scenes employees were poached over to the new television station founded by City Telecom's chairman, Ricky Wong, who recently applied for a free TV license. Aside from the multiple fold pay increase, the company offers to compensate the early contract termination fees. According to the news, there has been over 30 employees that handed over their resignation letters. The main catastrophe lies within the editors and directors, even TVB's golden producer Lee Tim Shing was a potential poach candidate. Yesterday the source also mentioned over 10 low-paid scriptwriters resigned. The situation in the TVB production department is getting quite serious.
Reporters contacted TVB Deputy Director of Foreign Affairs (Tsang Sing Ming) to clarify. He quoted the information provided by the Human Resource department, and expressed until today TVB received less than 10 resignation letters, so the situation isn't too serious: "TVB employs 280 TV program developers, over 80 of them are scriptwriters and the rest of them are classified as data collectors and composers. In the last several days, most of the resignations clustered in the production sector. The number of resignations is indeed higher than normal." Asked if TVB will immediately give a pay raise to keep their employees? Mr. Tsang said "HR said pay adjustments have already been made in July and the majority of the adjustments were made for the assistant directors and junior scriptwriters." He expressed there are many employees in TVB, it is normal that there are some coming and going. He stressed that the productions temporarily have not been affected.
Producer Lee Tim Shing admitted he was a target for poaching, but declined the offer: "My contract expires late next year, by then I would have turned 65 years old, my abilities are limited." Tim Gor said frankly working for TVB can be a killer: "I never stopped working, today I went to work and worked from morning until night." As for the poaching incident, Tim Gor has heard of the news and said it's time for TVB to self-reflect on why their employees are leaving.
Since the production team can be 'vacuumed' at anytime, it is inevitable for the currently filming series including Fala Chen and Roger Kwok's Schemes of East and West and Steven Ma and Linda Chung's Prosperous Father to suffer a great impact. However, Wayne Lai, who is currently filming The King Makers is not worried of the high quality productions being affected: "There are seniors and experienced people watching over us." Wayne also believed pay raises is an urgent priority: "In fact, scriptwriters leaving the company has always been a serious issue. From what I understand, even screenwriter graduates only get a few thousand on the paycheck. I do want to take this opportunity to say that I hope TVB will give raises to behind-the-scenes employees and boost the morale." Myolie Wu, currently filming Endless Exchange of Enjoyment, said: "TVB shoots so many series each year, even if there is such situation happening, they can handle it." Maggie Cheung appeared at the TV station for an event, and felt that TV station employee shifts are normal.
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