The National Communications Commission (NCC) on Wednesday said Formosa TV (FTV, 民視) management must come to the commission for an interview next week to help it review the television network’s license renewal application.
NCC spokesperson Wong Po-tsung (翁柏宗) said FTV’s license is to expire on June 10 this year and the company had filed an application for license renewal at the end of last year.
The commission expects FTV to send its general manager or anyone who could represent the network to make certain commitments to the commissioners, Wong said.
The commissioners also want the network to answer several important questions regarding its operations, Wong said.
“We want to know what the network’s plan is to meet the percentage of domestically produced content required by the Radio and Television Act (廣播電視法),” Wong said.
“We have also examined the network’s record and found that it has been penalized quite a few times for violating rules on product placement and accepting sponsorships from advertisers,” he said. “FTV will be given an opportunity to react.”
Meanwhile, the network should inform the NCC if there is any change to its business plan, as it is facing the challenges brought by over-the-top content providers, such as Netflix and Apple TV, and other new media, Wong said.
The commission is aware of disputes between FTV’s management and some of its main shareholders, he added.
“We hope all broadcast media would pay close attention to corporate governance issues, which should not disrupt their daily operations,” Wong said. “They should also bear in mind that they are using government-assigned radio frequencies to provide broadcasting services.”
Formosa TV held a shareholders’ meeting yesterday, and media reported that disputes between the station’s management and some of its main shareholders have intensified as two camps are vying to secure majority ownership of one of the nation’s most profitable television networks.
The company’s management, including chairman Kuo Bei-hong (郭倍宏) and network president Wang Ming-yu (王明玉), controls 5 percent of its shares.
Shareholders opposing FTV’s policy, led by Ve Wong Co’s Taketada Egawa (陳建忠) and Kingbright Electronic co-chairman Song Wen-chou (宋文洲), control 31.5 percent.
The remaining 63.5 percent are owned by other institutional and independent shareholders.
A group of FTV shareholders on Tuesday petitioned the NCC to request that the commission investigate whether funding from Chinese investors was used to purchase shares from small shareholders.
Chinese Communication Management Society president Weber Lai (賴祥蔚) said the dispute arose as its ownership structure remained unclear for many years, which caused people to question the legitimacy of the chairmanship.
“The NCC should use this opportunity to ask FTV to go become a publicly listed or an over-the-counter firm,” Lai said, adding that the network is the only terrestrial television station that has yet to go public.
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,