The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday backtracked on provisions it included last week in its approval of management changes at China Television Co (CTV) and CTi TV.
The move came after the China Times Group (中時集團) printed ads in newspapers accusing the NCC of abusing its authority.
The Want Want Group acquired the financially troubled media conglomerate in November. Want Want is Taiwan’s biggest rice cake and beverage maker and earns about 90 percent of its revenue in China.
The takeover in part sparked concerns that China would use its influence over the company to manipulate Taiwan’s media.
The NCC last week imposed conditions on the management reshuffle, including prohibiting management personnel, directors and supervisors from either TV station from concurrently holding similar positions at the other — a requirement that needed to be met within three months.
The commission also said each network should have at least one independent board director affiliated with neither the Want Want Group nor the China Times Group, the two stations’ parent firms.
The two stations’ ad, sales and programming departments were also required to remain separate and the networks were required to produce programming independently. They were also barred from jointly bidding for ad contracts.
CTV and CTi TV were also instructed to establish separate ethics committees within three months. Editorial and programming review personnel at each network were required to submit separate reports on quality control procedures to the NCC within three months.
The NCC also said that as CTV is a terrestrial TV service, no overseas or Chinese investment would be allowed, in accordance with the Broadcast and Television Act (廣播電視法).
For CTi TV, a cable network. the Satellite Cable Television Act (衛星廣播電視法) states that overseas investors may own less than 50 percent of shares.
The NCC said it would rescind its approval of the management reshuffle if either network violated the regulations on foreign investment.
The NCC’s moves drew a spate of criticism from the groups’ media outlets, including the Chinese-language newspapers the China Times and the Commercial Times, CTV and CTiTV, saying that the provisions had no legal basis and the NCC was discriminating by applying the rules to CTV and CTiTV alone.
However, NCC spokesperson Lee Ta-sung (李大嵩) said after a routine meeting yesterday that some commissioners proposed revising the conditions.
The NCC said the group must only “take note” of the conditions on foreign investment and management regulations.
It also modified the requirement for independent board directors to say that it was not a requirement but a suggestion.
For CTi TV, the requirement to produce programs in its own studios was changed to a suggestion as well.
The rest of the conditions, as well as the deadlines that both stations need to follow, remained unchanged.
Lee said that since CTV is a terrestrial TV service with a special operational license and a public trading firm, the commission set stricter requirements for it.
When asked if the adjustments were related to the attacks on the NCC, Lee said: “We [the commissioners] are still alive, our minds are still clear and we can still talk and joke about things.”
“We have heard [the criticism]. And what we’ve heard was the rational part of the discussion, which we took into consideration in making the adjustments,” he said.
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