A local Internet crusader wants BeeTV to go to the back of the bus.
The blogger -- who goes by the nom de guerre "BusMan" -- is fed up with the proliferation of advertisements on the flat-panel screens installed in the back and front of many Taipei buses.
Bombarding helpless bus passengers with the repetitive programming is like "gang rape," he says.
BusMan is the virtual alter ego of a bored civil servant, a nine-to-fiver who has little choice but to rise at 6am on weekdays to catch the bus to work. He airs his grievances on the Internet, interacting with visitors to his anti-BeeTV blog (http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/anti-beetv/guestbook). The weblog has registered nearly 11,000 hits in its first four months of existence, suggesting that BusMan has tapped a strong current of public resentment regarding the BeeTV phenomenon.
He has even gone so far as to compare himself to Rosa Parks, the African American woman who galvanized the US civil rights movement by refusing to sit in the back of a bus in 1955. BusMan says Taipei's buses are ground zero in the populist fight against the inhumanity of corporate Taiwan.
Despite the vitriol and hyperbole, BusMan's manifesto actually comes off as rather reasonable. He appeals to authorities to merely tone down BeeTV's content and volume; he doesn't advocate banning the screens altogether.
And he's not alone. The popularity of his vision, at least in cyberspace, hints at the possibility of a full-blown anti-BeeTV movement. A growing number of bloggers are airing their fight to win back peace and quiet on buses, so that commuters can reflect or nap a little before joining the daily rat race. And a recent informal survey of local straphangers found many who agreed that BeeTVs were obnoxious and too loud.
Is BeeTV really as invasive and annoying as BusMan would have us believe?
Scott Lee (李世揚), CEO of OmniAd Media, which owns BeeTV, told the Liberty Times that characterizing the service as "gang raping" passengers was going a bit too far.
"If there wasn't any BeeTV, there wouldn't be any money for the electronic announcement signs," Lee said.
He added that the TVs are quieter than the buses themselves and that BeeTV intends to clean up the content, adding more educational or cultural programs.
Responding to criticism that BeeTV is force feeding bus passengers commercial after commercial, Lee told the newspaper that the advertisements account for only one-tenth of overall BeeTV content.
But the company's website (http://beetv.omniad.com.tw) contradicts these numbers. It states that BeeTV shows 24 minutes of advertisements for every 36 minutes of programming. And a BeeTV spokeswoman told the Taipei Times that the content is actually split 50-50 between
advertisements and programming.
Whichever figure is accurate, BeeTVs do seem to have quieted down and become less racy these days. They've even attracted a loyal fan base.
According to a recent media survey by US-based market analysis company ACNielsen, the majority of Taiwanese public bus passengers are aged 12 to 39. Many of these are students. This explains why BeeTV gears much of its content towards a younger, trendier audience. Students tended to be enthusiastic about BeeTV because it helped them pass the time on the bus by entertaining them with cartoons and other content that appealed to their generation.
Many adult or elderly participants interviewed for the survey also said they didn't mind BeeTV -- as long as the volume was low.
In the end, Taipei is likely to follow the example set by cities such as London, Tokyo, and Singapore. They have banned audio media on public buses and trains, due in part to pressure from irate riders. A movement to stamp out noise pollution on Hong Kong buses is also afoot.
BusMan, it seems, is on to something.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s