1 Beyond the 20-Year Survival-- Taiwan PSB moving between cultural nationalism and Asian assimilation Hamilton Cheng Doctoral Research Fellow Taiwan Public Television Service Paper presented at IAMCR 2018 POST-CONFERENCE Public Service Media in a Time of Global Reordering: Sustainability, Reinvention and Extension Eugene Campus, University of Oregon, United States June 25, 2018
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1
Beyond the 20-Year Survival--
Taiwan PSB moving between cultural nationalism
and Asian assimilation
Hamilton Cheng
Doctoral Research Fellow
Taiwan Public Television Service
Paper presented at
IAMCR 2018 POST-CONFERENCE
Public Service Media in a Time of Global Reordering:
Sustainability, Reinvention and Extension
Eugene Campus, University of Oregon, United States
June 25, 2018
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Beyond the 20-Year Survival--
Taiwan PSB moving between cultural nationalism and
Asian assimilation
Hamilton Cheng
Abstract
The Taiwan Public broadcasting TV service is operated by a Foundation for running this
multiple functions for serving the citizen and society in this fast changing pace of
technological nation. The other tidal change is belongs to the politics and identity.
Taiwan is always under the cross-fire from the debate of unification with People’s
Republic of China or not. The media is busy engaging this topic based on their identities
affiliated over years within market, language, and ideology. What a future of us is
beholding should not be clear until really assessing the current changing global order
has been went through.
After the Trump Administration has been launched in 2017, the DPP government ruled
by President Tsai is manifested her full-fledging governance project. The Taiwan state
is returning back to the confrontation track by unilaterally rejected the consensus
between here and Mainland China on the mutual understanding of one-China policy
scenario. The national government in order to achieve its survival by making a triangle
alliance between U.S., Japan and it again after 1950s the hinterland strategy was
manipulating. For easing her trade reliance on China exportation, Taiwan relaunched
a New Southbound Policy in fostering much closer exchange with ASEAN Countries.
This policy create an alternative and even contradictory nature of public media
consideration by national government foreign relationship agenda guiding mainland
and cultural, communication ones.
The recent proposal to cure the long-term financial hardship of Public Television
Service (1997-2017) planned into a reorganization between itself with Radio Taiwan
International and Central News Agency into a public media group. Ministry of Culture
in Taiwan intentionally made a counterpart to the Mainland’s new media regime by
merging CCTV, China Radio International, and China Nation Radio together. This
trending probe on both side is reaching a climax on cultural war and nationalism.
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However, the New Southbound Policy is unintentionally making a contrast with the
defensive nationalism goal. The ASEAN countries is moving into an economic bloc to
signing a RCEP Deal into a regional economic integration with China. The common
ground of public service broadcasting policy in several ASEAN countries is
strengthening themselves in facing with internet age by reengineering economy scale,
scope, finance, facilities as part of national building. Those counterbalancing or
countervailing trends is against at nationalism or liberal media democracy promoted
by U.S. and DPP led-coalition.
This research article is making an argument regarding the global new order impact on
Taiwan media and politics recently for joining the debate on go-beyond the 20-year
survival experience of PTS and its future trendsetting based on the aspects of
technology, politics, economy, culture.
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Introduction
On 1 July, the late-coming and state-of-the art of PSB (public service broadcasters) was
formally launched in Taiwan 20-year before. This landmark day arose the professional
affirmation and the praise of people amid the over-commercialized policy of TV
industry since 1960s. Eroding by TV-streaming on internet worldwide and the liked,
the trust of local TV channel and its program provided is championed by the public
service broadcasting recently. According to the Survey of Valuing Public Television
Service Report, the highest scores (8.71 out of 10) of PTS received from responders is
the “irreplaceable alternative to current commercial broadcasting”. However, the
total public funding for Taiwan PSB is far below the lowest (3.0 CAD for United States)
of per capita within OECD countries by $1.74 CAD (Nordicity, 2016). The “value to pay”
is not reflected onto the finance of public television in Taiwan. The politics and
regulation is stipulated the National government has the right to approve its
appropriation and confirmed annually by parliament. The lacking of political will in
strengthening PSB regularly is discovered by the short period of PTS progress in the
last 20-year.
Through what performance consistent with its mandate working in the last 20-year,
this article is built a fundamental assessment for this review purpose. Other than
structuring the current situation, one must looking the future of any PSB beyond the
television landscape into the ubiquitous service era for allowing anytime, anywhere,
any device to access the digital content for serving public interest. The research
intended to propose the future outlook of PSM in Asia in general, and late coming
democracy in particular.
For a general inquiry, the operating entity for PSM will develop for the future of
internet streaming and mobile device broadband service. However, this article would
argue as one very small size of PSM in Asia (much smaller than any OECD country),
should the full-fledge moving into internet service competitively be the top priority for
us stood as the lowest one along index chart of per capita public funding. The policy
of maintaining sounding PSM in here is intensively politicized. The more distance of
arm’s length we keep between politician and PSM, the less money it received from the
legislative measure and protection. How to scaling up the public funding per capita of
Taiwan on the index worldwide is the enormously important issue discussed by the
various sectors of supporting friends for public broadcasting. Before securing the
investment, talent, creativity, and technology for social media and internet platform,
PSM in Taiwan should be underwent a policy reform and debate.
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Historical Reflection
Taiwan Public Television Service (PTS) is legalized in 1997 after 20-year’s policy debate
within political party and forum. This very late comer of television operators is
disadvantageous to the commercial TV operated by cable and satellite service, even
inferior to the private-owned terrestrial TV station. However, the new line-up of
channel and great hit program of drama, news, and documentary affirmed the
alternative and irreplaceable niche market it obtained. Under the great support from
the audience group, academia, art and cultural sector, PTS is secured its public funding
at USD 26 million without further cut in 2001. Based on the stable appropriation, PTS
is moving back to the European model of PSB as the leading role in technology
innovation and comprehensive program making for “to inform, educate, and
entertain”.
During the digital TV age, PTS is leverage on this linchpin (digitization) for changing the
channel line-up with technology transfer altogether. The leading role of PSB is
successfully achieved by adopting strategy of DVB-T standardization as a course to
maintain future digital platform evolving. This standardization is moving the topic from
picture quality (ATSC 1.0) to content quality and drew the attention of public into the
sounding diverse program currently TV industry provided. The finance for transforming
analogue to digital TV is secured by National government and Parliament to disburse
PTS procurement for facilities functioning as the leading platform.
The policing TV transformation is another kind of regulation and subsidy to PSB in
Taiwan. It indirectly complied with Recommendation 3: Public Service Broadcasting,
Bangkok Declaration on Information & Broadcasting in the Asia-Pacific Region acting
with government grants for infrastructure of PSB. The move is indicated with the
changing signpost of Taiwan media policy switched to Asia-Pacific region concern. The
very Declaration is prepared for the coming World Summit on Information Society
2003. Within the late coming Summit in Geneva, a Broadcasters’ Action Plan was
approved for transforming state broadcasting to independent public service
broadcasting mainly. The two-related international documents of PSB plan is activated
Taiwan PTS into developing a comprehensive reorganizing project.
The former one, by equipped the maturing digital technology, PTS resourced further
public funding and commercial invest for new genre of program based on interactivity.
The multichannel and mobility is realized by DVB-T implementation. On the other hand,
to transform the state-owned Chinese Television System (CTS) into public owned-one,
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PTS is received the status of holding enterprise to own CTS with a special grant for
developing Public Broadcasting, Cultural Creation and Digital Television Development.
Those two national grants paved the way to policing financial arrangement for another
wave of digital transformation in the following years (see Table 1.).
Table 1 The Government’s Finance Assistance from 2003 to 2012
Year The Projects Budget (USD)
2003-2009
(2008 was
excluded)
The Project of Constructing Common Transmission Platform
(including DTT network, MHP testing, mobile TV system) 40 million
2006 The Project of Public Broadcasting, Cultural Creation and Digital
Television Development 83 million
2011 The Project of Building HDTV Network in Eastern Taiwan
1.5 million
2011 The Project of Upgrading 21 Gap Fillers from SD to HD System
2.5 million
2012 The Project of Producing HDTV Programs 6 million
Total: 133 million
Source: compiled by authors and PTS
Those projects above are documenting as the portfolio for commissioning PTS any new
one of launching new service and platform onward (ex. UHDTV, OTT). The digitization
finance of PTS is unintentionally sustaining the sounding shape of current undertaking
by without fine-tuning inflation mechanism on government appropriation annually.
The compensation effect is approved by recent government audit report by Control
Yuan (2018) as follows table. The breakdown of revenue indicated that PTS is
increasing heavily the government grant for its digital and organization transformation
as one of the major sources for its revenue. The freezing annual appropriation caused
by lacking of political will went without alternative to maintain a normal operation. As
a result, the national grant is desperately needed for easing the burden of PTS finance
requested by the highly demand for audiovisual content from public. The one-off
national grant turned out to be the solution to move beyond political dilemma to reach
consensus on the issue of public funding.
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Table 2. The Finance of PTS and its Administration Expense, 2017
Revenue Breakdown Thousand (USD) Percentage of total
Government Appropriation 30,000 43.09
Operating Minority Language Service 17,400 25.03
Digitization National Grant 9,100 13.09
Cable Television Broadcasting Fund 3,600 5.29
Fundraising 9,366 13.50
Expense Breakdown Thousand (USD) Percentage of total
Administration (Personnel) 27,433 40.30
Percentage of Government appropriation
91.44%
(Source: Control Yuan, 2018)
The Functioning of PTS in Serving Public
Under this circumstance, Taiwan PSB is run by a small entity to serving the
fundamental demand if not the comprehensive one to maintain a modernization and
democracy course. The regular survey of Valuing Public Service Broadcasting report is
finished recently at March 16, 2018. This randomly survey provided many indications
regrading PTS, its survival and uniqueness in the current turbulent digital wave.
PTS is doing a self-evaluated on its performance, basically aiming to its programming
output as follows,
Table 3. Total Programming from All PTS Channels, 2014 and 2017 Comparison
Genre News
Current
Affairs
Sports Docu Drama Arts Info Education
Hr./2017 2,392 384 756 2,057 338 1,804 643
% 29% 5% 9% 24% 4% 21% 8%
Hr./2014 1,795 46 1,055 2,643 777 1,430 725
% 21% 1% 12% 31% 9% 17% 9%
(Source: Eastern Online Co., 2018)
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The PTS , as the sole PSB operating in Taiwan, must be complementary to the rest of
commercial TV broadcasting service. The sports, lowest percentage of output, is a
minor function based on the funding scale smaller than private-owned one. The
highest output, news, current affairs and documentary tell the priority to serving
democratic governing saliently. The politics of TV media is following this path of
development to determine the way corporate governance. Second to news and
documentary, drama is also heavily invested by PTS for reaching demand of Asian
market, including Taiwan as part of it. PTS, as long as it launched, maintained although
small but regular arts and education program produced, played the only platform for
local performing arts and talent, nurturing children and adolescent. Again, it proved
the value of its existence.
At first, this small PSB running for legislative mandate within its particular geopolitics,
must be driven into identity and cultural autonomy contestation, especially against the
Chinese-speaking world (Hsu, 2014). What the increasing hours of news and current
affairs production recently is a sign of PTS raising the awareness of Taiwan ranking
number one of freedom of press in Asia (Horton and Ramzy , 2018). With praise of
Freedom House and relocation of Reporters without Borders AP Office, Taipei is the
new residence of independent journalism other than Hong Kong. Moreover, a new
documentary film “Self-Censorship” by Kevin H.J. Lee was broadcast by PTS and
promoted by “Viewpoint” in the first half of 2018. Taiwan PTS is reasonably chosen as
the next bastion for independent journalism criticizing Mr. Xi’s China in near future.
Nonetheless, Taiwan PTS is not only championed as the political issue reporting and
commentary but also provided the alternative narrative on historical drama. In 2016,
Ministry of Culture, PTS jointly commissioned the independent house produce a
historical drama “A Touch of Green”. The alternative interpretation of Taiwan politics
before martial law lift is brought by this drama gained the success in commentary and
social media discussion. Finally, the very drama won the first ever best drama series in
Asian Television Awards held in Singapore. This drama motif brought Taiwan PTS one
step closely to Asia value and state (public service) broadcasting industry.
Again, “The Teenage Psychic” is another masterpiece of 2017 drama production. PTS
is managing this co-production with HBO Asia as its first Chinese-speaking series.
Domestically, this drama is widely welcomed by local audience and gained the highest
rating regarding the channel ever made. Internationally, with the help of IFA Media, a
Singapore production company, the show reached to 23 Asian countries. Behind the
scene, PTS successfully transformed the original story into a pilot TV drama accepted
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by International Public Television (INPUT) as the screening topic serval years ago.
Where the original one has been marketing into the format exchange with the
international players for pitching next stage of production. The process indicated
Taiwan PTS is gradually integrated with the Asian audiovisual market in general, and
international public television service and sphere in particular.
Those two major outcomes of PSB production in Taiwan are realizing journalistic
independence and cultural cohesion but contradicted each other. In the same way, the
new platforms through internet streaming respectively contributed to the two types
of above performances.
The independent journalism of PTS strengthened innovatively through a new internet
platform for acting online and update service in the name of “PNN” (PTS News
Network). This network is replacing the channel as the new branding of public
journalism service for younger generation.
On the contrary, drama is strongly stabilizing the current market for PTS channel by
acquiring the following profile of audience (using ex. “A Touch of Green”),
Table 4. The Profile of Audience Watching “A Touch of Green”
Profile Description
Gender Female (55%)
Age Over 45 (55%)
Area Southern Taiwan and East (28%)
Persons with Job Male (30%) Female (26%)
Education University and College (48%)
Reception Digital Terrestrial Free-to-Air (63%)
Source: “PTS President Report”, 2016
Driven by the new platform, the drama of PTS is undergoing a new windows strategy.
It looks at OTT as the site for first launch or simultaneously releasing with TV channel.
Without the managing budget for new media, PTS started to heavily upload the video
streaming onto YouTube platform, as follows record the progress is made,
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Table 5. The Viewing Time for PTS through YouTube
Year Viewing minute Viewing hit
2014 110,262,833 25,552,534
2015 252,575,461 45,089,725
2016 408,066,154 66,064,861
2017 579,607,390 84,138,997
Source: Control Yuan, 2018
Other than uploading platform effect, the Board of PTS increased the funding of 2016
to USD. 2,038,781 (from 1,545,313 in previous year) and invested in New Media
Department to expand its internet based service. It included launch of PTS VOD service
(via six thematic YouTube Channels), PTS+7 and one experimentation YouTube niche
channel. Before the fine-tuning with inflation mechanism is set, the new media churned
out by PTS is rather like a trial than a significant network player.
The 20 Anniversary of PTS Positioning
Before reaching the July 1 of 20 anniversary of PTS, the timely survey above also
portrayed an image of PTS reflected from Taiwan citizen as the general, for example,
the following chart for representing those of programming,
Figure 1. Two Surveys and Responses on the Quality of PTS Program