The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that it would resubmit a draft media monopolization prevention and diversity preservation bill to the Executive Yuan, which would be the third version put forward.
Following calls in 2012 to prevent media monopolies, the commission submitted its first proposal in 2013, which secured preliminary approval from the legislature’s Transportation Committee.
However, as the Act Governing the Exercise of Legislative Power (立法院職權行使法) states that the legislative body at the new legislative session should discontinue deliberations on unsettled bills from the previous session, except for budgetary bills and petitions, the 2013 proposal was killed.
In January, the NCC passed a revision and submitted it to the Executive Yuan, which returned it to the commission last month.
“The Executive Yuan said that the proposal does not address issues resulting from competition between Chunghwa Telecom’s multimedia-on-demand [MOD] and cable TV systems, and it wanted us to reconsider the issues,” Department of Legal Affairs Acting Director Huang Wen-che (黃文哲) said.
The commission put more emphasis on maintaining professionalism and independence of news media in its latest revision, Huang said.
In other developments, the commission on Thursday next week is to hold a hearing on proposed amendments to the regulations governing the establishment, evaluation and license renewal of satellite broadcasting businesses, which would revise the definition of first-time broadcasts to reduce rerun rates on cable channels.
In February, a Consumers’ Foundation study showed that cable channels generally have an exceedingly high rerun rate, at times reaching 50 percent.
Under the current rules, a cable channel could meet the criteria for a first-time broadcast even if it shows a movie or program that has been aired on other channels, as long as it has never broadcast the item itself.
The amendment would change the definition of first-time broadcasts to exclude movies and programs that have aired on a cable or MOD channel in the preceding five years.
Beijing could eventually see a full amphibious invasion of Taiwan as the only "prudent" way to bring about unification, the US Department of Defense said in a newly released annual report to Congress. The Pentagon's "Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2025," was in many ways similar to last year’s report but reorganized the analysis of the options China has to take over Taiwan. Generally, according to the report, Chinese leaders view the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) capabilities for a Taiwan campaign as improving, but they remain uncertain about its readiness to successfully seize
Taiwan is getting a day off on Christmas for the first time in 25 years. The change comes after opposition parties passed a law earlier this year to add or restore five public holidays, including Constitution Day, which falls on today, Dec. 25. The day marks the 1947 adoption of the constitution of the Republic of China, as the government in Taipei is formally known. Back then the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governed China from Nanjing. When the KMT, now an opposition party in Taiwan, passed the legislation on holidays, it said that they would help “commemorate the history of national development.” That
Taiwan has overtaken South Korea this year in per capita income for the first time in 23 years, IMF data showed. Per capita income is a nation’s GDP divided by the total population, used to compare average wealth levels across countries. Taiwan also beat Japan this year on per capita income, after surpassing it for the first time last year, US magazine Newsweek reported yesterday. Across Asia, Taiwan ranked fourth for per capita income at US$37,827 this year due to sustained economic growth, the report said. In the top three spots were Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong, it said. South
Police today said they are stepping up patrols throughout the Taipei MRT system, after a social media user threatened to detonate a bomb at an unspecified station this afternoon. Although they strongly believe the threat to be unsubstantiated, Taipei Metro police and the Railway Police Bureau still said that security and patrols would be heightened through the system. Many copycat messages have been posted since Friday’s stabbing attacks at Taipei Main Station and near Zhongshan MRT Station that left three dead and 11 injured, police said. Last night, a Threads user in a post said they would detonate a bomb on the Taipei
RSS