The National Communications Commission (NCC) is to arbitrate today in a dispute over content authorization fees between Taiwan Broadband Communications (TBC, 台灣寬頻) and Formosa TV (民視), as the two keep failing to reach an agreement.
Today’s arbitration is the second time that the NCC has been asked to intervene in the case.
TBC, a multiple service operator, owns five cable TV systems in northern and central Taiwan, with a total of 700,000 subscribers. It was supposed to reach an agreement with the Formosa TV network by the end of last year regarding the amount of content authorization fees that TBC would have to pay this year to broadcast the network’s news channel on its systems, but the negotiations fell apart.
TBC later notified Formosa TV that it would have to remove the network’s news channel from its channel lineup for fear of infringing on the network’s copyright, which prompted the NCC to intervene.
Through arbitration at the end of last year, both companies agreed that Formosa TV would give TBC a temporary authorization allowing the service operator to broadcast the news channel until Thursday this week. In the meantime, the two parties were to continue negotiations over the content authorization fees.
However, almost no progress has been made in negotiations front in the past two months.
Regarding the gridlock, TBC said that in the past, its partnership with Formosa TV allowed it to carry only the news channel without paying a fee, and that in return, the network did not have to pay a fee to have its news channel included in the channel lineup.
However, the network this year changed its practice, demanding that FTV One (民視第一台) and FTV Taiwan (民視台灣台) — two other channels in the network — also be included in the service operator’s channel lineup, TBC said, adding that the network is also demanding that the authorization fee be calculated based on the content aired on all three Formosa TV channels.
TBC found these demands to be unacceptable, as it only intends to carry the network’s news channel and does not think that it should pay for the content of the other two channels, it said, adding that it has twice invited Formosa TV to negotiate, but the network boycotted both meetings, insisting that its conditions be met.
“If negotiations fail to produce any positive result this time, we will have to cease transmitting broadcast signals for the Formosa TV news channel, effective at 12am on Friday,” TBS said.
“The door for negotiation is still open,” TBC added. “The last thing we want to see is the Formosa TV news channel being removed from our channel lineup — a no-win situation for the channel, the cable systems and the cable service subscribers.”
Both sides have been asked to attend an arbitration meeting at the commission today, NCC spokesperson Weng Po-tsung (翁柏宗) said, adding that the commission hopes the dispute will end peacefully.
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
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
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