Couch potatoes nationwide just got a new reason to exercise -- by taking more walks to the kitchen.
The 24-hour advertisement-free English-language movie channel Cinemax, is to begin running ads starting April 1, an industry insider told the Taipei Times yesterday.
"According to the channel operators, Cinemax will begin airing TV advertising in early April," said the advertising executive who asked to be identified only by her surname, Lin.
The right to sell ad space on the popular channel is expected to go to Eastern Multimedia Group (東森媒體科技集團), the parent company of the ETTV network (東森電視).
"Everything is in the final stage, but the details are still pending. The trend is we have agreed to be their agent," said Charles Wu (
ETTV has seven local channels including news, movie and cartoon channels, in addition to alliances with several TV-shopping networks.
But the right to sell the lucrative airtime won't come cheap. "Talk in the industry is ETTV bought the rights [to air ads] on Cinemax for over NT$100 million," Lin said.
While the news bodes well for companies seeking access to "probably the island's second most popular English-language station after HBO," the viewing public, while not expected to wage a remote control boycott of the channel, have had their fill of advertising.
"Running advertisements on Cinemax will result in more complaints from TV watchers that there are just too many ads on TV -- a common occurrence in Taiwan," Lin said.
"I hate the idea of watching ads on a paid TV channel like Cinemax. Sounds like its going to become another Sun Movie," said a member of the viewing public, Dave Silver.
According to television regulators at the Government Information Office, TV channels cannot broadcast more than 10 minutes of advertising per hour.
HBO and Cinemax are both part of Singapore-based HBO Asia, and broadcast via a satellite provided by Pacific Digital Media (太平洋衛視).
HBO Taiwan refused to comment on the story.
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