The Taipei City Government yesterday proposed that the Exucutive Yuan's Government Information Office (GIO,
The proposal was made by Director of the Department of Information (新聞處), King Pu-tsung (金浦聰), during a visit to Su Tzen-ping (蘇正平), director of the GIO.
If the GIO is to call for the veto, it is required by law to do so within 10 days. For the veto to take effect it must receive the endorsement of the Executive Yuan, which must then request the approval of the president. If the president approves of the proposal he must ask the legislature to reconsider the amendment.
Chang Chong-jen (張崇仁), GIO director of radio and television affairs, however, downplayed the possibility that the GIO would call for the veto.
"We have to prove that the law is difficult to carry out before we make such a move," he said. "It's a very complicated process, I don't think we plan to do so."
The Legislative Yuan passed the amendment to the Cable Television Law on Thursday. It allows the central government, namely the GIO, to supervise fee structure formulation for cable television. It also allows it to impose penalties against cable TV operators which illegally place advertisements over original programming by running characters along the side of the screen, (跑馬登) or as "cut-ins" (蓋台廣告), which are often poorly-produced adverts which are crudely inserted over regular programming.
The amendment also specifies that no ceiling should be set for the fee structure.
King complained that the passage of the amendment negated the rights of local governments, which had been able to fix ceilings on the fee structure and to oversee local cable TV operators.
"It's purely centralization of authority," King said after the 30-minute closed-door meeting with Su. "It's been a long-standing tradition that the local governments take control in these matters. The fee structure is not our primary concern here, and we're not trying to compete with the Central Government. What really concerns us is consumers' rights and the quality of programs."
King, who said he was stunned to learn of the passage of the law yesterday morning, said that he could not accept the reasons given by the legislators who approved the bill.
"It's an insult when they said that the ceilings of monthly fees set by local governments were designed to cater to the public," he said.
Also, King said, it does not seem practical for the central government to supervise all the cable TV operators in Taiwan.
Finally, he said, it does not make sense to ask the city government to raise Taipei's NT$550 monthly fee ceiling and other local governments to lower theirs.
"It's an amount carefully calculated by experts, and the reason that Taipei's figure is lower than that of others is because it's cheaper to set up cable services in Taipei," he said.
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