The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday rejected the Chinese Television System’s (CTS) application for a change of board members and overseers because its major shareholder, Public Television Service (PTS), failed to comply with regulations, the NCC said.
NCC spokesperson Chen Jeng-chang (陳正倉) said that PTS’ regulations state that any resolution made by the PTS board could only take effect if at least two-thirds of the board members attended the meeting.
PTS — which owns 83 percent of CTS shares — held a board meeting in May to select its representatives to the CTS board. CTS held a shareholders’ meeting in June to select 21 new board members and two overseers, who then chose PTS chairman Cheng Tung-liao (鄭同僚) to serve as the new CTS chairman.
“PTS has 12 board members able to participate in the board meeting, so at least eight board members had to be present,” Chen said. “We found, however, that only seven board members actually attended the board meeting in May. And since the board meeting didn’t meet the requirement, the resolution it made was not valid so the NCC turned down the CTS application for a change of board members and overseers.”
The NCC’s decision to reject the changes came after the PTS board decided on Saturday to terminate its relations with the 21 board members and remove Cheng as CTS chairman.
Because of the case, the Government Information Office (GIO) has sent official letters to the NCC four times, asking it to “handle the case cautiously,” Chen said.
The NCC ruling leaves the CTS without a governing board and a chairman. When asked to comment, Chen said PTS is under the administrative authority of the GIO so the NCC cannot comment on PTS management issues.
The ruling also intensifies an apparent struggle between Cheng and the GIO. Cheng earlier last month filed an appeal with the Control Yuan, asking it to investigate the GIO for taking action against seven members of the PTS board in a bid to paralyze the television service.
The GIO last night said it respects the NCC’s ruling and it would ask PTS to select new representatives to the CTS board.
In other news, the NCC fined PTS NT$150,000 (US$4,688) for airing an award-winning Taiwanese movie Here Comes the Black Dog (黑狗來了) during general rating hours, even though it was parental guidance (PG)-rated.
“Though the sexual scenes are part of the movie’s creativity, most panel members determined that it should not be aired during general rating hours,” said Chien Hsu-cheng (簡旭徵), deputy director of the NCC’s Communication Content Department.
The PTS said it would appeal the case to the Executive Yuan.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching