In response to widespread criticism of the Golden Bell Awards show on Friday last week, the program’s producer yesterday posted a long message on her Facebook page, saying that while criticism was expected, overt criticism could affect the willingness of celebrities to attend the next awards show.
Netizens have been leaving posts on various social media platforms — including Facebook, personal blogs and PTT (the nation’s largest online bulletin board system) — criticizing almost every aspect of the show — from technical glitches to the program’s content.
“We expected there would be criticism and have steeled ourselves for it,” producer Liu An-hua (劉安華) wrote on Facebook.
Liu acknowledged the poor sound system and camera work, saying they needed to be improved.
However, she said critics should go easy on the stars whose performance may have been affected by the technical glitches.
“If stars are criticized for their performance due to hardware or broadcasting problems, who would want to participate again in the ceremony in the future?” she wrote.
Liu said she wished that everyone had been able to see the ceremony live and hear how excellent the singing had been on stage.
“We admit that we did not do well in some parts, and we can offer no excuses for that. We will try to make improvements in the future,” she added.
Commenting on a common criticism by netizens that the show lacked big stars, Liu said no one mentioned that more than 95 percent of stars who won attended the ceremony.
Chang Hsiao-yen (張小燕), long revered as the godmother of television, Pai Ping-ping (白冰冰), Momoko Tao (陶晶瑩), Vic Chou (周渝民) and others attended the ceremony from start to finish, Liu said.
“Is that not a sign that the entertainment business is unified?” Liu wrote, adding that criticism that one of the program’s hosts did nothing but “stand there like a flower vase” was unfair.
“As many netizens have already mentioned, the winners barely had time to speak; asking the hosts to take up more time with their performance would only invite more criticism,” she wrote.
As for the widely criticized move to gradually lower the microphone if the award-winner’s speech ran over 45 seconds, Liu said it was a decision made by management to avoid heavy fines if the show ran over time.
“We were under heavy pressure to strictly control the timing at the request of the Ministry of Culture,” Liu wrote.
She dismissed speculation that the move was designed to prevent stars from commenting on political issues onstage.
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:
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