IT'S A FROG'S LIFE
IN TAIWAN

Television

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Television in Taiwan - Graham's observations, now with audio clip
Television for the International Community in Taiwan
Article by Jeffrey Thorne - first published in the March/April 2004 of the British Chamber of Commerce in Taipei's Britannia magazine

Digital TV by 2008 - China Post article

 

Television in Taiwan - Graham's observations

OK, let's not beat about the bush here. Television in Taiwan is bad. Witness:-

Graham:- "Will you miss Taiwanese TV when you return to the UK?"

My Taiwanese friend:- "No."

In my apartment I have a cable TV service with somewhere in the order of 80 channels. There are five or six channels showing only financial news; channels with 24 hour local, national and (occasionally) international news; shopping channels; channels with dramas and soap operas; sports; MTV Taiwan; movies; and animation. In fact, it's the kind of spread you would expect in the UK (apart from the financial channels! Who actually watches them??). So if the choice is so wide, then why do I think it's so bad?

Well the main reason for me is that I can't watch the channels I want to watch. For more information on the whys and wherefores of this I would suggest you read Jeffrey Thorne's interesting and informative article further down the page.

Putting aside the problems over the English language content (or lack of), what about the rest of the output?

Drama
Granted, I don't speak Chinese, but I know a dodgy drama when I see one, and there are plenty such dramas and soap operas on Taiwanese TV with dreadful sound, wobbly sets, lousy acting, unconvincing fight scenes, and shockingly poor direction.

News
The 24 hour news channels carry little international news, and the local news is often banal in the extreme. "Local farmer has watermellons stolen from field..." Cue pictures of said farmer standing in field with some watermellons missing! (true example) Oh yes, and there's way too much politics...

Light entertainment
There is a light entertainment programme which I think is really funny, although the Taiwanese people I have asked about it don't seem to notice. The set up is two presenters, a panel of guests/celebrities, a studio audience (in a can), and various guests with (often dubious) talents to show. This in itself isn't humorous, but the fact that the whole programme is accompanied by a barrage of sound effects is.

Presenter 1 says something (swannee whistle - rising)
Presenter 2 replies (honk, honk)
Guest 1 comments (rising scale played on an organ)
Guest 3 interjects (gong)
Presenter 2 laughs at comments from Guests 1 and 3 (swannee whistle - falling)

Here's an audio clip of part of the programme. See if you can count the number of sound effects!

 

To think that there's someone sitting in the control room whose job it is to press buttons and to choose the most appropriate noise. "Sh**," he whispers to himself, "I did a gong when I meant to do a cymbal. I hope nobody noticed. After all, it'll be my job on the line if I make any more mistakes like that one!"

Typing the above I've just realised what the sound effects remind me of... Carry On films! They remind me of the soundtrack/backing music to the Carry On Films, that great British film tradition of smutty situation humour. Ever since I realised this a couple of days ago I've been half expecting Sid James or Kenneth Williams to appear on screen.


update - January 2005

It's now almost the end of January and I'm just about getting used to the new channel line-up. You see, every New Year the cable company changes the channel numbers. Apparently it's based on how popular they were in the previous 12 month. HBO Asia, which was previously Channel 55 is now Channel 64. All the others have changed too, with some - CNN being the one I noticed - disappearing all together, and others - CTTV and Hollywood Movie Channel - being added as new channels to the broadcasting output. Very confusing, and rather bewildering too.

 

I could go on, but I won't. Maybe if I spoke fluent Chinese I would appreciate the local content more, although I doubt it. However, I know that a lot of Taiwanese enjoy a lot of Taiwanese TV - and watching TV does seem to be one of the many national pastimes - so who am I to criticise too much?

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Television for the International Community in Taiwan

If television is the devil's own instrument, who the devil must you pay to get decent TV?
by Jeffrey Thorne

The following article was written by Jeffrey Thorne and printed in the March/April 2004 issue of Britannia magazine, published by the British Chamber of Commerce in Taipei. I'd like to thank both Jeffrey, and the BCC Executive Director Lee Ting for kindly giving their permission to replicate the article on my website. Visit the BCC website by clicking the logo above or at the end of the article.

Television is chewing gum for the eyes
– Frank Lloyd Wright

Intellectuals are often dismissive of television, but for most of us it is a treasured medium for entertainment and education. For foreigners living in Taiwan, it is also a source of great comfort and might even be considered a necessity. Most of us adapt to Taiwan’s society, but I suspect for many it may always remain alien. Television is a medium that transports one from the strange to the familiar, from the foreign to the native.

Is there anything wrong with television in Taiwan? Possibly nothing from a local perspective, but for most foreigners it is 80 or so channels of unintelligible rubbish. English-language programming is generally limited to movies, natural-history channels and news. There is a smattering of western drama on HBO and some of the local channels, but in the case of the latter, it is difficult to fathom the programming schedule, and even if you did inadvertently stumble upon Frazier, it is likely that Episode Three from Series Four would be followed by Episode Five from Series Two.

It could be argued that what is currently available is better than nothing. True, but frankly I am grossed-out on elephants, cheetahs, Chuck Norris and the lamentable CNN.

I accept that any guest of a foreign country has no unequivocal right to demand home comforts, but there are external factors that encourage further debate on this subject:
1) Taiwan’s repeatedly expressed desire to internationalise;
2) The advent of cable television and now digital television;
3) ICRT’s recent petition for better television. I will return to these themes later, but it is worth remembering that it was not always like this.

Back in the early 1990s Taipei experienced an explosion of international satellite and cable programming. In every sense, the television market at that time was competitive, popular, diverse and affordable — a shining example of a successful, de-regulated business. Cable operators offered customers a basket of programming options tailor-made to suit a variety of interests and budgets.

Programmes on offer included the major European news channels, CNN, international cricket, F1, football, all the StarTV channels, MTV (Europe and USA), DW, TV5, and, ahem, 24-hour US porn. I recall that everyone I knew at the time, including the French and Germans, thought that the local television was superior to anything they had at home. The only problem was that it was all illegal.

Subsequently, the government stepped in to regulate and “improve” cable services. And collect tax revenue. Nothing wrong in that you may say, but the resultant cable-TV arrangement we currently endure is notable only as a model of public-private-partnership incompetence.

In Taipei city, the cable-TV market is now controlled by just two operators that have their charges and output controlled by the government. It gets worse. Customers cannot choose between the cable operators, nor do they have a choice of programmes, as there is no facility to purchase additional channels. The resulting stalemate is a lose-lose situation, setting disenfranchised customers against two uncompetitive cable companies whose artistic and commercial creativity is stifled by the government.

Is there a market here for more foreign programming? The cable providers clearly think that there isn’t, at least within their present commercial framework. New foreign arrivals in Taipei are surprised by the ancient local custom of retuning television sets each January in order to find last year’s programmes. The new channel numbers generally reflect each programme’s popularity and the state of negotiations between content provider and cable operator. This year, CNN has slipped from channel 90 to a very fuzzy channel 3. Oh dear!

Does anything need to be done, and if so, what should be done? The answer to the first question is a resounding YES, because available cable-TV technology can resolve the present conflict between the interests of a minority of international viewers and the cable operator’s commercial imperatives. The second question is dealt with by returning to the three themes raised earlier:

Taiwan’s Desire to Internationalise

Successive city mayors have expressed the need to make Taipei city more international, more foreigner-friendly, in order to attract inward investment necessary for the economy. Great strides have been made with English road signs and government information Web sites, etc., but rarely if ever, has television been mentioned within this context.

Unfortunately, television lacks the intellectual gravitas of other worthy matters, but if the BCCT took a straw poll of it members on “foreigner grumbles”, television would probably be right up there. And let’s face it; in today’s global-information economy — where a typical SME company has less need to be in all the countries of its customers but must at least be accessible within their region — access to international television programmes might be another factor in deciding whether to locate in Hong Kong, Taipei or Singapore.

However, this argument has a limited shelf life. Personally, I accept that Taipei will never be international in the sense of Hong Kong or Singapore (and possibly Shanghai.) I also accept that my television interests are in the minority, but hope that one day I will at least have access to a facility whereby I can pay for them.

Cable-TV Technology

Cable-TV and the forthcoming digital-TV have all the necessary technology required to distribute hundreds of television programmes to customers in several languages. It simply requires a concerted effort from the government and cable operators to make it happen. The BCCT and other foreign chambers of commerce can also assist in this endeavour.

A few years ago CNN was taken off the air (in January, according to local custom) because the cable operators said that there were insufficient viewers to justify distributing it. I understand that it was AmCham that eventually got it back on air. If our communities do not raise awareness of our interests to local government, they will never be served.

This brings me back to the subject of the “international community.”

The ICRT Petition

International Community Radio Taipei must be applauded for its recent petition for “Better Quality Television,” which returned over 30,000 signatures. This outstanding idea will go some way in stimulating further debate. But what precisely constitutes better television for the international community?

Westerners commonly make the mistake of assuming that “internationalism” is the same thing as “western-ism” and some assume that Western interests and the “American Way” are one and the same. Although there is an amount of mutual interest and crossover, it is unlikely that the Japanese community will be that interested in western programming, and vice-versa. So there will be a problem in agreeing on what to broadcast for an international community per se.

Also, with the greatest respect to ICRT, this rather American radio station illustrates another paradox: Britons and Americans speak the same language but have contrasting tastes in music and drama, and simply cannot agree on sport. Besides, how bad can local television be for Americans? The bulk of English-language programming is already sourced from America.

So there is no obvious solution but I am sure that each foreign community must raise its own television agenda. There will be sufficient cable bandwidth to cater for most communities’ television interests, providing that each is prepared to pay for it via pay-per-view subscriptions.

For the British community (and perhaps the Commonwealth community as well,) much of our English-language interests could be served via the excellent Hong Kong based StarTV network, a wholly-owned subsidiary of News Corporation, owned by Australian Rupert Murdoch (and owner of Britain’s satellite SkyTV). Just imagining the sports coverage already licensed to News Corp. makes me drool.

I look forward to the day when major international sporting events such as football’s World and European Cups, F1 and international cricket tests are broadcast together with supplementary English commentary (via SAP). Does anyone know why English commentary was cancelled half way through last year’s Rugby World Cup tournament?

StarTV, the BBC and many other goodies are — in theory — already available in Taiwan. We just need someone to tell the apathetic cable-TV operators to plug them in.


© 2004 - Jeffrey Thorne/British Chamber of Commerce in Taipei

(Jeffrey Thorne is the regional manager of Brecknell Willis & Company Limited, a successful engineering firm specialising in railway electrification. He can be reached at jeffreythorne@brecknellwillis.com.tw)

British Chamber of Commerce in Taipei
Celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2004
(Publishers of Britannia magazine)

British Trade and Cultural Office - Taipei
British Council - Taipei

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Digital TV

The following article is from The China Post, Tuesday, November 9, 2004, page 19. Having read Jeffrey Thorne's article (above) about the current state of affairs with regard to the provision of TV for the international community, the news of the introduction of digital TV to the island must be welcomed as a positive move in the right direction. It is hoped that in introducing the new digital TV technology the government will use this opportunity to give the broadcasting companies freedom to offer more international channels.

Cabinet presents its timetable to introduce digital TV before 2008
Taipei, CNA

The China Post, Tuesday, November 9, 2004, p19

The Executive Yuan unveiled yesterday its timetable for the full digitalization of television in Taiwan by 2008.

According to the timetable mapped out by a financial and economic panel of the Cabinet, all 29-inch TV sets and larger sold in Taiwan must be embedded with a digital receiver starting 2006, and the policy will be expanded to cover all 21-inch and larger starting 2007.

All TV sets sold in the market will be digital products starting from 2008.

Government Information Office (GIO) Director-General Lin Chia-lung said the promotion of digital TV must be carried out simultaneously at the production, reception and programming ends in order to be successful.

The government will halve the commodity tax for digital TV sets before the end of 2010 to lower the prices of digital TV sets and offer an incentive for the people to replace their old TV sets with a digital product, Lin said.

Lin said the analogue channes currently owned by local cable TV networks will be recalled in 2010.

In addition, he said, the government will subsidize the purchase of add-on digital TV receivers by low-and-medium income families that cannot afford to buy brand-new digital TV sets.

As far as digital programming is concernned, the GIO is planning to guide the five wireless TV networks to form a joint transmission company and to cooperate with high-quality overseas networks to enhance the quality of domestic TV programs, Lin said.

While there are some nine million TV sets around Taiwan, the new policy is expected to bring enourmous business opportunities to TV-related industries, Ministry of Economic Affairs officials said.

The prices of digital TV sets will be comparable to those for traditional analogue TV sets following the mass production of digital TV sets, the officials predicted.

The prices for an add-on digital TV receiver should range between NT$2,000 (US$60) and NT$2,900, they said.

 

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Page created 25 Nov 04 - updated 5 Sept 05
Copyright Graham Holland © 2004

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