Taiwan Today

In September 1962, Taiwan Television Enterprise (TTV) opened a factory to produce TV sets in anticipation of the first commercial TV transmission on the island. TTV, in cooperation with three Japanese companies, produced only 4,500 sets in 1962, and Taipei residents were lining up for blocks in front of the factory in hopes of buying one. In a ceremony on October 10 of that same year, Madame Chiang Kai-shek pushed a button in the TTV studios and Taiwan began its official television history. Neighbors, friends, and relatives crowded into the few households lucky enough to have a TV set and shared in the newly arrived marvel of Western technology.

The local television scene has come a long way since then. Last year the TV industry's gross income totaled nearly US$390 million, and according to 1990 data, there are now over 5 million color TV sets in Taiwan, an average of more than one per household. Television has become an integral part of the lifestyle of the island's 20 million residents by providing their major source of information and entertainment. While many people do not read the local newspapers every day, few miss an evening of TV news. And much of the public's entertainment focuses on TV, rather than going to movies, sporting events, or cultural exhibitions and performances.

TTV's premier broadcast was but a small first step for the industry. Initially, only the northern third of the island could pick up the VHF broadcasts from the station's 5,000-watt transmitter. By 1965, after TTV had set up several relay stations in middle and southern Taiwan, practically everyone could tune in to the broadcasts. For seven years the station monopolized the airwaves until the establishment of a second VHF station by the China Television Company (CTV), which began broadcasting in October 1969. A third station, the Chinese Television System (CTS), came on the air exactly two years later. No new VHF stations were established thereafter because government leaders thought that the three stations were adequate to meet the needs of the times.

The early days of TV were plagued with inadequate facilities, inexperienced personnel, and limited finances. When TTV first went on the air, Taiwan's real per capita income was about one-seventh its current size. Advertising revenues were limited, and so were funds for studios and equipment. At first, the station was on the air for only five hours a day. The early programs included variety shows, news programs, serials, Peking operas, children's programs, and various art and educational programs. Until the end of 1969 the telecasts were all black and white.

At first, the station had difficulty finding people to be TV show hosts and actors in the dramas. The earliest group was culled from the existing pool of radio announcers, movie actors, and stage performers, but they were rarely suitable for TV. Radio announcers had the voice, but did not know what to do before a camera. Movie actors knew how to move, but they had little voice experience because in early Taiwan movies the sound was dubbed in later. And stage performers tended to have exaggerated movements and booming voices meant to carry to all corners of an auditorium. The result was unprofessional TV performing, and for the pioneers it was a time of learning by doing.

Chiang Lung-chao, a producer with CTV since its inception in 1969, recalls the early days: "When CTV first went on the air we improvised a television stage set in the recording studio of the Broadcasting Corporation of China radio station and borrowed two nearby houses as our offices. Our setup was so primitive that it was hard to imagine competing against TTV, which had already been on the air for seven years." But by keeping technicians on the job twelve to fourteen hours a day, CTV quickly made up for lost time. Less than three weeks after startup, the station carried a live satellite broadcast of Neil Armstrong's historic walk on the moon. A month later, the news department went to all-color broadcasting, making the ROC the eighth country in the world with color TV facilities.

Professional standards have steadily improved since the early days, and so has the quality of station facilities. All three stations broadcast from their own multistoried complexes in Taipei with top facilities for recording, broadcasting, and administration. The newest of these is the CTV complex in Taipei, opened in late 1986. Besides completely modern studios and broadcast facilities, there is even a "TV City" open to the public so that people can see TV programs in the making.

Government TV regulations have played an important role in guiding the industry's maturation. When TTV first went on the air, the station's directors drew up their own regulations in the absence of government rules. The station based its regulations on the TV code of the National Association of Broadcasters in the U.S. In 1967, however, the government decided that self-regulation was not enough. It therefore set up a Bureau of Culture under the Ministry of Education with control of the TV and broadcasting industry as one of its primary responsibilities.

The bureau began drafting a "Broadcasting & Television Law," but by the time the law went into effect in 1976, the bureau was defunct and the Government Information Office (GIO) had taken over as the regulatory agency for the industry. As is normal practice, a set of detailed enforcement rules were drawn up to supplement the law. Both the law and the enforcement rules were revised in 1982 and remain in effect today.

The law lists four categories of programs for regulatory purposes: newscasts and publicity concerning government policies and orders; education and culture; public service; and entertainment. The law requires that at least half of the weekly programming has to be non­-entertainment fare falling into the first three categories. The enforcement rules give further details on the definitions and content of each type of program. For example, educational and cultural programs are supposed to "further Chinese culture, promote social education, supplement school education, and develop children's intelligence and abilities." The programs are also supposed to "introduce refinements in living, public morality, physical culture, hygiene, and education in ethics."

In an effort to bring regulation of the TV industry more in line with new social and political realities, in May 1990 the GIO drafted a major revision of the TV production code originally issued in 1983. Except for children's programming, which remains under fairly strict rules, most other categories of programs were put under a far more liberal regimen. The changes reflect a feeling in the government that the TV industry is mature enough for a greater amount of self-regulation. Concurrently, policymakers believe that market demand as represented by the desires of the TV audience can play a bigger role in determining the content of TV programs.

While changes in regulatory policy are giving producers greater flexibility, so far there have not been any major changes in programming. The three stations currently broadcast around 16 hours per day, and the categories of shows have remained constant: variety, educational and cultural, news, public service, and drama.

The "variety show" category is taken quite literally. Some shows have a mind-boggling mixed format, borrowing from game shows, amateur hours, travelogues, nature clips, and topped with educationally uplifting cultural demonstrations—all accomplished in one hour.

The pop song variety show has long been one of the most popular with local audiences. The format rarely varies. It includes a mixture of small talk and humorous dialogue between the male and female hosts, interspersed with performances by individual singers backed by choreographed dancing. In line with the Chinese preference for a "hot and noisy" atmosphere, performers are often surrounded by gyrating pompom girls, heavy blasts of atmosphere from fog machines, other stars waiting to perform, and even part of the audience sitting on bleachers.

One of the top-rated variety shows is an amateur hour that has been on the air almost two decades. Called the "Five Lights Award," the show's judges award contestants from one to five lights on the stage scoreboard. Local college students and other amateur musicians and singers compete for prizes, and a number of professional recording contracts have been signed with people discovered on the show.

Also included in the variety show category are game shows, many of which are takeoffs on Japanese or American programs. They range from question-and-answer formats to obstacle courses. Of the latter, much of Taiwan tunes in to watch a Sunday afternoon show that always features bizarrely-dressed hosts and imaginative courses constructed over water. Surprisingly, given the quality of some TV programming, there is no derogatory term in the Chinese language for TV like "boob tube" or "idiot box."

In the news category, TTV and CTV broadcast two or more hours of morning news, and all three stations have noon­time and evening news programs. While the focus has been predominantly on local news, the scope is finally beginning to expand. CTS's "News Magazine" and TTV's "Hotline" take in-depth looks at important news stories both at home and abroad. And panel programs such as CTS's "News Meeting," which features audience participation, and CTV's "Talking About the Nation" bring in local experts to discuss current national and international issues.

Sports coverage is limited, especially when compared with American programming. The most common are sporting events featuring players from Taiwan competing in regional matches, and play­off games in the U.S. and Europe. Team sports have yet to draw much financial and audience support, making the local sports scene rather dull. In a major policy breakthrough, TTV will broadcast the Asian Olympics live from Peking in summer 1990.

All three commercial stations broadcast half an hour per day of public television programming supplied by Taiwan's Chinese Public Television (CPTV) organization. An additional half hour of CPTV programming is rotated between the three stations every seven months. This will continue until Taiwan's public TV has its own broadcasting station.

Each of Taiwan's TV stations also broadcasts several American TV series per week, which are subtitled in Chinese even when they are dubbed in Mandarin. Recent popular favorites include "The Bill Cosby Show," "L.A. Law," "Mac­ Gyver," and "Love Boat." American movies are also broadcast on a regular basis. The majority of the American films are dubbed in Mandarin, but some aired later in the evening are broadcast in English with Chinese subtitles. Last year there was an Alfred Hitchcock Film Festival, and more recently CTV has been airing Oscar-winning films from the U.S.

By far the most popular and profitable programs are the daily or weekly Chinese serial dramas. Even though heart­-wrenching plots are standard fare, they differ from American TV soaps in that they sometimes draw on popular literature, historical events, and adaptations of martial art novels. They can also feature pure slapstick, achieving the entertainment equivalent of "Leave it to Beaver Meets the Three Stooges."

The TV weeklies also differ from U.S. productions in that they usually feature a continuing drama rather than a self-contained story featuring the same characters. Each station airs three or four serial dramas per day, one of them in the Taiwanese dialect. Both Taiwanese and Mandarin programs have subtitles in Chinese script, making the programs understandable to any reader of Chinese as well as people with hearing disabilities.

It has been a long-standing programming policy for all three stations to broadcast a Mandarin dialect serial drama during the 8:00-9:00 P.M. time slot on weekdays. As one TV executive explained, "When viewers like a certain serial drama, they usually tune in to the program every night during the six to eight weeks the show runs. When we tried airing a different program each night, we found that people weren't tuning in as consistently as with the continuing serial."

Of course, if a show bombs, this policy means the station risks huge viewer defections. But the potential rewards are substantial. If a station hits on a winning show, it can command top advertising rates. Moreover, it is common practice for stations to request that advertisers on popular prime-time shows also purchase two or three additional spots in less desirable time slots, effectively multiplying the station's ad revenue. Competition for prime-time ratings is fierce, but the stations usually work out an agreement beforehand so that they will not air the same type of serial drama in the same time slot.

Actually, whatever the results of the ratings game, all the TV stations come out on top financial­ly, thanks to a rather unique production environment. According to the Broadcast and Television Law, 70 percent of all programs are to be locally produced, but the percentage actually comes closer to 90 percent. With the exception of the news and certain special programs such as live sports broadcasts or concerts, almost all of the programs are put together by outside production houses contracted by the TV stations. There are now several hundred of them competing for contracts to make TV programs and commercials (many of them are also taking wedding videos on the weekends to help meet their overhead expenses).

There are two main ways in which the stations contract with a production house. The production house either finds advertisers for its program and the station gets a percentage of the advertising revenue, or the TV station sells its advertising time and pays the production company for creating the program. In either case, the TV station gets the lion's share of the money.

If the production house sells the advertising, the station takes between 50 and 60 percent of the revenues. There is some risk in this for the production house because they must guarantee the station a minimum amount for a given time slot. If advertising revenue fails to reach that amount, the production house must make up the difference or else the program will be canceled. No matter what happens, the cards are stacked in favor of the TV station.

These production arrangements are the result of the buyers' market enjoyed by the TV stations. For the majority of programs, the production houses are paid between US$5,500 and US$12,800 for a one-hour program (they receive somewhat more for prime-time programs). This amount is a fraction of what would be spent for a comparable program in Japan or the U.S., and it is often barely enough to cover costs. As a result, production houses are often forced to cut corners, and this is reflected in the inferior quality of many of the final products.

Commenting on this situation, one major TV station executive says: "Everyone would like to see more money available for program production, but the situation here is different from many other places. Most programs are aired only once, unlike the U.S. where a program will be run in several TV markets and earn advertising revenues each time it is shown. Also, U.S. programs often go into re-runs, which is almost unheard of here. And there is also a healthy export market for U.S.-produced TV shows which we don't have."

Many production house managers believe that the stations are too greedy when it comes to advertising revenues. For example, during the 9:30 P.M. time slot, ten seconds of advertising costs about US$875. According to the present law, a one-hour TV program can have ten minutes of advertising, which would make the total advertising revenue for the program around US$52,500.

But if the TV station is responsible for selling the advertising, they will give the production house only about 20 percent of the total to produce the program, which is not enough to fund a quality production. With one-sixth of the time devoted to commercials, viewers find themselves watching programs that have inferior production values and are cluttered as well.

One local production house manager says: "Given the amount of money that the stations make in advertising revenues, they don't reinvest nearly as much as they should in upgrading facilities or sending personnel abroad for advanced technical training. They're also not giving it to the production houses so that they can raise the quality of their programming." Undeniably, local stations are all making a hefty profit. An indication of this comes from the annual bonus given at the Chinese New Year. Companies customarily give their employees a bonus of two or three months' salary. Yet one TV station gave each of its employees a bonus equivalent to thirteen months' salary at the end of 1989!

Some people feel that the problem of low-quality TV programming is a result of the monopoly that the three stations have on the industry. "There are three major differences between TV in Taiwan and elsewhere," says Wu Nien-chen, a scriptwriter. "We don't have a TV station wholly run by the private sector, and there is still no pay TV and no government-supported public TV station like NHK in Japan or Britain's BBC. This limits viewing choices."

Because a significant percentage of the shares in Taiwan's three TV stations are controlled by the Taiwan provincial government (TTV), the ruling KMT party (CTV) , and the ministry of defense (CTS), they are not totally in the private sector. But there is little evidence of government day-to-day interference in the administration of the stations. The stations receive no financial support from the government and rely solely on advertising revenues.

Concerning the lack of a public television station and cable TV, GIO officials addressed these issues earlier this year. A budget is already being prepared so that construction of a UHF television station for public TV can get underway. Furthermore, Shaw Yu-ming, director-general of the GIO, indicated in response to an interpolation in the Legislative Yuan on April 3, 1990, that in one or two years, licenses will be available for up to twenty cable TV stations. If more stations begin broadcasting, demand for TV programming may rise to create a sellers' market in which producers can command higher prices.

Increased public criticism of the content of Taiwan TV programs is finally beginning to have some impact on programmers. An indication of this came in March 1990, when the China Times newspaper hosted a series of lectures on the theme, "Taiwan Television: How Much Longer Can We Stand It?" Professors, movie critics, authors, and the well-known opposition legislator Ju Gau-jeng were mostly critical of the current state of the industry. All three TV stations also had representatives at the lectures.

In general response to the criticism, Liu Wen-lung, vice-president of TTV, said: "Everyone would like to see local TV programming continue to improve. But there are some very basic considerations. First, do people watch TV for education or entertainment? Most people come home from work tired, and they turn on the TV to have a laugh and take their minds off the problems and pressures of the day. Of course, the best programs can entertain and educate at the same time. As to the TV stations being overly concerned with profits, where in the world is there a commercial TV station that doesn't look to maximize its profits?"

Despite the criticisms about quality, some positive changes in the style and content of programming have already emerged in the past few years. For example, "Women, Women," aired each Tuesday evening from 9:30 to 11:30 on CTV has broken new ground. The program addresses one of society's ever-present issues—sex. Panels of men, women, or both sexes discuss questions such as "How would you react if your spouse suddenly announced he (or she) wanted to sleep in a separate bedroom?" The show has dealt with questions concerning sexual dysfunction, a spouse's extramarital affair, and "sex and the single female." In addition to the participants, a psychologist or sexual counselor joins the discussion.

When the program first went on the air, there was a good deal of stuttering and blushing by the participants. In traditional Chinese society, sex is something hardly ever discussed in private, much less in front of a TV audience. But the show has been a breakthrough in local TV programming and a model for doing away with many traditional taboos and misunderstandings. The show was awarded the coveted Golden Bell Award as the best variety show of 1989.

As Taiwan's economy has developed, the number of residents traveling overseas has mushroomed. A growing thirst for knowledge about the outside world has given birth to a travel show called "Isn't the World Amazing." Utilizing a game show format, the program takes viewers to different parts of the world to explore various customs and cultures. In the three years since the show went on the air, the production crew has traveled through most countries in both the industrialized and developing world, bringing the exotic and unusual to local screens.

Also highly acclaimed in the travel program category is "Eight Thousand Miles, Clouds and the Moon," a continuing travel documentary about mainland China hosted by Ling Feng. After 40 years of separation between Taiwan and mainland China, Ling's program [see FCR, February 1990] has given TV viewers a visual appreciation of China's history and geography. Ling won a Golden Bell Award in 1989 as the best host of a cultural and educational program.

Another recent addition to Taiwan TV has been the nighttime talk show. The recently coined Chinese name for talk show is "to-kou hsiu", which literally means "show coming out of the mouth." The most heralded of these so far was "Nighttime Get­-Together," broadcast at 10:00 P.M. every weekday. Hosted by female TV personality Chang Hsiao-yen, the program featured discussions with prominent politicians and local celebrities.

The show had a good start, but after only two months on the air CTS announced that it would be cancelled. One of the major problems was that the production house making the program was overwhelmed by the amount of work needed to produce a nightly show, and the pressures led to a decline in the show's quality. Except for prime-time serial dramas and the news, few if any Taiwan programs have run on a daily basis. Negotiations are under way to keep the show on the air as a weekly entry.

Even though these shows indicate a trend toward better programming, local television still has a way to go before it can satisfy viewers, producers, and sta­tion managers with great expectations and high standards. Nevertheless, recent trends in TV programming, Taiwan's continued economic and intellectual development, and the anticipated increase in the number of stations within the next few years all indicate that there is reason to be optimistic about the future of Taiwan television.