Taipei City's public-access TV channel is poised to meet more diverse interests with the city government yesterday celebrating the launch of a program for its long-ignored Vietnamese community.
Public Access Channel 3 (PAC 3), which formerly broadcast on channel 77 for four years until the government's channel reshuffle, allows people in Taipei to create and broadcast their own content. The channel has mostly screened community events and school activities.
Addressing the launch of the channel's new program, Witness Vietnam, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
"The public-access channel is an important outlet for minority-group interests within a community. This new program will benefit the more than 10,000 Vietnamese who reside in Taipei, and we invite all members of the community to make your voices heard through this channel," he said.
Zhu Feng-gang (祝鳳岡), director of the Taipei City Public Access Channel Promotion Committee, said that a public-access channel can be a powerful medium for a community to form a consensus, to promote local culture and to assist the citizenry in identifying with the place in which they live.
More importantly, Zhu said, community members can exercise their right to express their opinions through the channel.
PAC 3 began broadcasting in 2001 under the requirements of the Cable Television Law (有線廣播電視法).
However, due to limited funding, the content and production value of programming was frequently of low quality, and insufficient promotional resources also meant that the channel remained a mystery to many people.
To better promote and develop PAC 3, the new head of the city government's Department of Information, Lo Chih-cheng (
"In addition to programming fees, the special fund will be used to promote PAC 3 programs so that people will have a better understanding of the channel and, hopefully, will be willing to take advantage of what the channel offers," he said.
Witness Vietnam will be aired Monday to Friday from 2pm to 3pm.
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