Three cable broadcasting operators could be fined this week for failing to follow procedure when they halted broadcasts of the Eleven Sports channel.
Dafeng Cable Co, Taiwan Digital Broadband and New Kaohsiung Cable TV Co stopped broadcasting Eleven Sports from June 1 after the channel and three cable operators failed to settle a dispute over the content authorization fees, despite three rounds of negotiations arbitrated by the National Communications Commission (NCC).
Because the cable operators refused to pay the fees it owed Eleven Sports, the channel stopped transmissions to them.
Photo: CNA
The cable operators did not file for changes to their lineups until May 30, two days before they stopped airing Eleven Sports, leaving little time to review the applications, the commission said.
According to its regulations, they were supposed to notify subscribers about the change by running a news ticker for at least five days in a row before removing the channel, which they did not do so, the commission said.
Management personnel from the three cable operators on Wednesday last week answered questions from NCC commissioners, who asked them to provide additional information, it said.
The commissioners said that they approved proposed changes to channel lineups and asked the cable firms to compensate subscribers by deducting one day’s charge from monthly fees or extending the payment period by one day.
The three operators have about 236,000 subscribers combined, the commission said, adding that Sportscast Unlimited is available in the absence of Eleven Sports.
The commission is to continue deliberations on the case this week.
The three cable operators could face fines of NT$60,000 to NT$3 million (US$1,910 to US$95,481) each if it is determined that their actions were inappropriate, and impaired the rights and interests of subscribers, the commission said, adding that they should make amends.
If no corrections are made by a deadline, the fines might be imposed consecutively or operating permits and licenses might be revoked, it said.
This is not the first time that a cable operator has taken a channel off the air because of an unsettled dispute over content authorization fees.
Last year, five cable firms under multiple system operator Taiwan Broadband Communications suspended broadcast of Formosa TV for 11 days because Taiwan Broadband Communications did not agree to the terms of the authorization charge set by the channel.
The NCC fined Taiwan Broadband Communications and Formosa TV over the incident.
As each case is different, punishments would be handed down based on which party an incident is attributable to, the commission said.
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