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Consumers take on TV political talk shows

Programmers of political talk television shows are facing pressure from consumer groups to improve the quality of their shows.

A group of consumers launched a campaign to demand that advertisers withdraw running TV commercials in the so called "spat talk shows" by boycotting their advertised products.

Starting in May, a number of consumers posted a notice on Web sites such as Taiwan Tea Party and a media-watching group "Against the Media" to urge consumers to boycott products advertised on the debate talk shows and call-in shows in a bid to push the program producers to cancel the shows.

Participants in the campaign expressed their anger on-line saying that there was too much provocative sentiment expressed by talk show hosts and guest speakers -- especially confrontations between pan-blue and pan-green camps -- that the programs were destructive of the quality of the nation's media.

Talk shows produced by cable TV station TVBS' News Night Club hosted by Lee Yen-chiou (李艷秋) and 2100 Public Talk hosted by Lee Tao (李濤), the Chinese Star TV's News 98 hosted by Chao Shao-kang (趙少康) and Legislator Sisy Chen's (陳文茜) talk show on China Television Company were targeted by campaigners as the worst debate shows.

TV hosts of the above-mentioned shows are known for their anti-DPP sentiment or pro-unification stance.

"By organizing the campaign to call consumers to boycott products advertised on these programs, we hope to cut the financial sources of these malicious programs so as to ensure the TV audience's rights for quality TV programs," the initiator of the campaign said.

Other participants in the activity claimed the campaign was an affirmation of Taiwan's civil awareness as the audience is beginning to understand that the TV shows should be free of political interference.

Activity initiators sent e-mails to advertisers in the programs, demanding that they revoke their advertising budgets from the programs.

As of yesterday, several companies had given positive responses to the calls for boycotting "spat programs" including I-Mei Foods Co, Brand's chicken essence, RT-Mart and Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Company, which had decided to withdraw their advertisements from the News Night Club.

For example, RT-Mart had replied to the campaign by saying it had decided to cancel all of its scheduled advertisements on the News Night Club starting from June 6, and will delegate its advertising company to review the TV show's ratings so as to adjust advertisement budget allocations.

Hu Yu-wei (胡幼偉), a professor at National Taiwan Normal University's Graduate Institute of Mass Communications said yesterday the campaign served as a warning to people working in the industry that they must understand the public's distaste for call-in talk shows or debate talk shows.

The campaign reflected that the talk shows were too narrow in selecting their topics as political subjects were overly concentrated, Hu said.

"Public policy issues are as important as political issues. It may be because discussion for public policy is not provocative enough that such issues are rarely discussed," Hu said.

Hsu said that guest speakers invited to the shows were usually lawmakers representing political parties or party officials. The guests are more often more concerned about defending the party line rather than the merits and flaws of the issue, he said.

"These discussions can be very confrontational, but the programs are not conducive to educating people about controversial issues at all," Hu said.

In addition, the repetition of the same invited guest speakers is so high that the audience always sees the same faces engaging in intense debates with rival politicians, a phenomenon that would drive away those who could otherwise offer constructive suggestions to the issue, Hu said.
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