Next TV employees yesterday expressed support for the sale of the network to ERA Communications chairman Lien Tai-sheng (練台生) and urged the National Communications Commission (NCC) to speed up its review of the sale and issue a ruling.
Lien officially took over operation of Next TV on June 1 after acquiring the network from Hong Kong-based Next Media for NT$1.4 billion (US$46 million).
The commission held a public hearing on the sale yesterday because the transaction involves the acquisition of a news channel, the influence of cable TV operators and other important issues. It said it wanted to hear from the two main stakeholders in the deal, media experts and representatives of civic groups and media associations.
Cheng Yi-ping (鄭一平), chairman of the Next TV Workers’ Union, told the hearing that a majority of employees supported the sale because both the seller and the buyer had shown goodwill toward them, giving generous severance pay and respecting their career choices.
He said Lien had also promised to negotiate with the union on salaries and benefits after the commission approves the transfer of ownership.
Cheng raised the question of why Next TV could only be viewed on cable channels recently, considering that it was formed four years ago.
“Is it because our programs are not good enough or our reporters slack off? We would admit it if that was true, but it is not,” he said.
He urged the commission to quickly rule on the sale, whether it decides to approve it or not.
Cheng said that as a journalist, he believes that the media should safeguard social justice and oversee the operation of the government.
“However, as the old saying goes: ‘You can only know honor and humiliation when you have clothes to wear and food to eat,’” Cheng said. “A majority of reporters are underpaid and are constantly asked to work overtime. How can you expect them to fulfill their social responsibilities, oversee the government and have the courage to break scandals?”
Next TV general manager Chen Shou-kuo (陳守國) said Lien was eyeing Next TV’s talented staff and high-definition broadcasting equipment when he decided to buy the network, which has been losing NT$100 million (US$3.33 million) a month.
The new management has sought to consolidate personnel and management from ERA and Next TV and tried to have Next TV included in cable services nationwide, he said.
However, one-third of the employees in Next TV’s news department chose to leave after ERA took over, he said.
Next TV’s ratings have not risen significantly since it was moved to Channel 45, Chen said. Only 60 percent of cable subscribers are able to watch Next TV because the cable systems owned by Kbro have yet to include the channel in their service, he added.
Chen promised that ERA and Next TV’s news departments would remain separate.
He also described the competition between the cable systems owned by Lien and those owned by other operators as that “between a mom-and-pop store and a convenience store chain.”
Lien’s cable systems on the east coast, he said, have fewer than 1 million subscribers and only account for about 1.9 percent of the market. His acquisition of Next TV would not lead to monopolization of the media nor create a “media monster,” Chen said.
Chen said Lien would still pay NT$1.4 billion to buy Next TV even if the commission vetoed the deal.
Chen Hsiao-yi (陳曉宜), chairwoman of the Association of Taiwan Journalists, said the commission should wait for the legislature to pass the proposed legislation against monopolization of the media before it starts to review the sale.
“The program rerun rates on ERA TV network channels are very high. This shows that the acquisition will not bring any diversity to Next TV’s programming,” she said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,