The legislature's Education and Culture Committee voted yesterday to scrap the Statute Governing the Broadcasting Development Fund (廣播電視發展基金條例).
However, the committee decided to postpone a review of the bill eliminating Article 14, Section 1 of the Radio and Television Act (廣播電視法) and turn it over for further negotiation among the legislative caucuses.
Section 1 says that radio and TV stations must appropriate a portion of their revenues as a fund to develop the Public Television Service (公共電視, PTS), which became the source of money for the Broadcasting Development Fund (廣電基金, BDF).
The fund had been managed by the BDF Foundation. Before PTS was founded in 2001, the foundation used the collected funds to produce public television programs to be aired by three broadcasting stations: Taiwan Television (台視), China Television (中視) and the Chinese Television System (華視).
The foundation lost its function after PTS was established.
It also became the subject of ire for the pan-blue camp, as the foundation’s executive director, Lin Yu-huei (林育卉), advocated a strong pan-green agenda and launched a movement to boycott media organizations perceived as supporting pan-blue parties.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Shiu-chu (洪秀柱) introduced the bill. She said it could not be put to a vote last year because the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) opposed the bill.
“The reason they [the DPP] were against the bill is that although this is a small position, it is nevertheless useful because they can put their own people there,” she said.
Hung also said that the article hurt the broadcasting industry because broadcasting service operators are forced to pay additional fees after paying revenue tax and airwave usage fees.
DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-lin (管碧玲) disagreed. She said that broadcasting is a special industry that must be regulated by either capping service charges or asking service providers to pay rent.
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