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Legislator wants more TV sport

Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Wei-cher, right, is accompanied by Taiwan Public Television Service (PTS) news manager Grace Tu, left, as he speaks at a press conference yesterday. Huang said that he hoped PST would broadcast more international sports events featuring Taiwanese sportsmen and sportswomen. PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES

A legislator yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) channel should work toward broadcasting more sports programs featuring Taiwanese players to fulfill the service's social responsibility and encourage local talent.

Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) said yesterday during a press conference at the Legislative Yuan that the public television channel started broadcasting baseball games featuring New York Yankees pitcher Wang Chien-ming (王建民) last April, a move that has gone down well.

On average more than 210,000 people nationwide watched the games on PTS last year, Huang said.

However, Huang said that the channel only broadcast Yankees' games but there were other famous Taiwanese players abroad, such as US minor league baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Kuo Hong-chih (郭泓志) and Colorado Rockies pitcher Tsao Chin-hui (曹錦輝), as well as other baseball players in Japan.

In addition there are many notable local table-tennis, tennis, and basketball players but their games were broadcasted infrequently Huang said.

He said that PTS' budgets was very tight, at only NT$900 million (US$27.8 million) per year, and that the fees for broadcasting Wang's games alone came to US$500,000 last year and US$600,000 this year.

Huang urged PTS to discuss budgets and cooperate with the National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports (體委會) or other commercial television stations to save resources and to be able to bring more sports programs to the public.

PTS news department director Grace Tu (屠乃瑋), said that the station would allocate more resources for sports coverage but it was difficult at the moment because the broadcasting rights for international sports events were extremely expensive to obtain.

This was only the second year that PTS had broadcast sports but it hoped to continue doing so, Tu said.

Chien Tzu-hsiang (簡子祥), the secretary of the Chinese Taipei School Sport Federation, said that sports programs were not a mainstay of television in Taiwan and focused mainly on baseball and basketball.

Soccer, for example, appeared only once every four years, Chien said.

More games should be shown on television to encourage local players as well as international ones, he said.

A die-hard Taiwanese baseball fan surnamed Liu said at the conference that she could only catch Wang's games on TV in Taiwan and not Kuo's or Tsao's, and so was forced to rely exclusively on newspapers for information about them.

She expressed a hope that more sports games could be shown on PTS or other channels.
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