As lingering controversy surrounding Public Television Service’s (PTS) governing body continues to unsettle the nation’s media industry, Chinese Television System (CTS), another TV channel affiliated to Taiwan Broadcasting System, has found itself embroiled in allegations of crippling debt and malfeasance on the part of its sitting chairman.
CTS, one of the country’s three oldest TV channels, had allegedly run up enormous debts that could be as high as NT$936 million (US$31.2 million) — more than half the company’s NT$1.6 billion capital — as of September last year, according to last year’s balance sheet, which was disclosed by an anonymous source familiar with the matter.
The financial statement also showed that over the next three months, the public broadcaster’s liabilities had increased by NT$42.3 million, to NT$978.3 million, as of December last year, a rapid debt accretion with which the company has struggled to keep up. In recent years it has rented out all of its unutilized media facilities.
Several of CTS’ studios have been rented to Formosa TV (FTV) and Super TV (STV) on a long-term basis, with some rented to Sanlih E-Television (SET TV) to screen the television drama of Gung Hay Fat Choy (我們發財了), and some to China’s popular video-sharing site Tudou.com for shooting variety shows.
Adding to the broadcaster’s financial upheavals and distress, allegations have emerged that its sitting chairperson, Yaly Chao (趙雅麗), had reportedly been covering up the company’s large losses from its shareholders.
An informed source said that given the size of CTS’ debt, Chao should have held a shareholder meeting last year and informed the company’s stockholders of its financial straits in accordance with regulations set forth in the Company Act (公司法).
Article 210 of the act stipulates that companies must call a shareholder meeting once their losses amount to half their capital.
However, Chao allegedly chose to conceal CTS’ financial data until very recently, the source said.
“Such an act is tantamount to dereliction of duty on her part,” the anonymous source said.
Additionally, an unidentified company source also accused Chao of malfeasance for a move designed to benefit the Innovative Center for Cultural and Creative Industries at Tamkang University in New Taipei City (新北市), where she had served as chief executive.
Chao allocated NT$600,000 to the center in the name of promoting “industry-academic cooperation,” the source said.
CTS convened a provisional meeting to select a new board of directors and supervisors on Tuesday, just three days before the Ministry of Culture was due to hold today’s review meeting for the appointment of PTS’ new governing body.
As the Board of Directors of PTS is entitled to head CTS, the timing of the provisional meeting has aroused speculation that Chao only called the assembly to safeguard her personal interests.
Prior to the meeting, the ministry was said to be vexed at Chao’s decision to advance the originally scheduled date of the meeting when it became aware of the rearrangement, sources said.
Sources also said Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) allegedly expressed disapproval of such a move and said it would give the public a “negative impression.”
Despite the ministry’s alleged objections, the public broadcaster opened the meeting and selected a new governing body as planned.
Downplaying the allegations, Ministry of Culture spokesperson Hsu Chiu-huang (許秋煌) said CTS’ shareholder meeting was held in accord with the Company Act and that its re-election of a board of directors and supervisors was only one of many tabled issues.
Hsu reiterated the ministry’s position that it would address CTS’ internal issues on the heels of today’s meeting to appoint PTS’ new board members.
When asked to verify that Lung had voiced concerns against the timing of the CTS meeting, Hsu denied the allegations, saying “there was no such thing.”
In response to the allegations, CTS issued a statement saying that the date of the shareholders’ meeting had been planned a few months earlier and that it was held in accordance with the law and not out of [Chao’s] personal interests.
On the issue of the company’s allegedly growing losses, the public broadcaster said it had returned to profit in the first five months of this year.
As of press time, Chao had not made any response to the allegations.
Translated by Stacy Hsu, 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
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
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