Tax hikes and wavelength reallocation should be included in any broadcast act reforms, civil groups said yesterday, calling for reforms to increase the revenue and space available to public television.
The Legislative Yuan is considering revisions to the Radio and Television Act (廣播電視法), the Cable Television Act (有線電視法) and the Satellite Broadcasting Act (衛星廣播電視法) to require cable companies to offer cheaper “basic packages,” while expanding requirements that the firms allow terrestrial television stations to use their networks for free.
Campaign for Media Reform and Citizen Media Watch said the revision process is being conducted in a “hasty” manner.
They said that tax hikes and wavelength reallocation should be part of any reform package because the broadcast wavelengths used by terrestrial television stations are public property.
“On the issue of making terrestrial stations ‘must carry,’ we see conflict among corporate interests and political parties, but what is really important is for us to look at the issue from the perspective of the public interest,” said Lin Lih-yun (林麗雲), a member of the Campaign for Media Reform’s executive committee.
Lin said that only stations with true “public value,” such as Taiwan Public Television, Hakka TV and Taiwan Indigenous TV, should be designated as “must carry.”
She added that revisions to “must carry” regulations should be made only in conjunction with reforms to the Public Television Act (公共電視法) and passage of an Anti-Monopoly Act (反壟斷法) to guarantee additional space and funding to public television.
“Currently the biggest problem with television is that cable service system operators take almost half of the profits, but do not contribute anything to content production,” she said. “Because of their monopolistic position, there should be taxes on their windfalls.”
Any additional funds raised could be invested into public television programming to improve quality and protect audiences “viewership rights,” she said, adding that the meager returns available to channel operators had led many to rely on cheap imported programming at the expense of domestic shows.
Other activists called for broader reforms to the management of the nation’s broadcast spectrum.
Clarence Chou (周宇修), a lawyer who is also a member of Campaign for Media Reform, said the allocation of wavelength blocks should be adjusted to free up some of the space reserved for the military.
Blocks of spectrum are “wasted” because many of them are not used, Chou said.
Citizen Media Watch convener Yeh Da-hua (葉大華) said that all television broadcasting wavelengths should be returned to the government for reallocation, requiring companies to either pay for their use of the space — raising money for public television — or demonstrate that their programming is for a public purpose.
She said that many terrestrial stations received their wavelength space while they were still government owned and had not been required to pay for usage rights after privatization.
Making additional wavelength space available would be helpful to Taiwan Indigenous TV, whose reliance on cable and satellite transmission prevents it from being readily available in some villages, Yeh said.
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