There was a spate of complaints in the press recently about cable TV operators assigning Taiwan's three sports broadcasters into unpopular slots. I was glad to see these complaints being aired, although I knew that nothing would change. When I turned on ESPN shortly after the Lunar New Year, however, I was stunned to see that the channel's bilingual service, which it had provided for years, had been canceled without notice. I am no longer able to enjoy the chan-nel's excellent English-language commentaries.
In Taiwan, the broadcasting of NBA games in Mandarin has long been criticized for its poor quality. Many of the anchors put us to sleep with their droning voices. Others simply babble and appear unprepared. The quality of the commentators is slightly better than that of the anchors, though some of them also talk nonsense. These shortcomings do not affect the English-speaking anchors. Their quality broadcasts, however, will exist only in our memories from now on.
All this nonsense raises the question, why should cable TV operators think of the interests of viewers? Payments for cable services are limited by the government. What is lacking is market competition.
Would the lifting of government control of cable fees lead us to the Garden of Eden that free-market economics promise? I am not sure that free competition in cable TV services would lead us to a perfect world. But I do believe that more competition will lead to better service.
Because cable fees are tightly controlled, cable TV operators all provide almost the same package, leaving consumers simply to take it or leave it. As a result, there are more than a dozen news channels that screen stories -- most of which are not worthy of being called news reports -- day and night. Consumers would be able to promote the quality of these news channels in a genuine manner if they were allowed to purchase them separately. Only under an unregulated pricing regime can positive competition among channels occur. Such competition would mean that we would be left only with the news channels we really need.
Sports fans should certainly be given the right to choose broadcasts in their favorite languages by paying selective cable fees. It is only through a mechanism by which the user pays for the services he or she really wants that broadcasters and cable TV operators will realize, for example, the true size of the market for English-language NBA broadcasts. This will force them to provide services catering to the needs of that market.
In a competitive market, consumers pay for the services they want. In Taiwan today, however, consumers are hard-pressed to find programs they actually want to watch after paying their cable fees. This may be a result of the lack of an effective mechanism to enable broadcasters and cable TV operators to learn about consumer preferences. Or it could be the result of a mistaken belief that consumers will not dare to cancel their subscriptions even though a particular service, such as ESPN's bilingual service, is canceled for no reason.
Ad-masking -- the practice whereby cable TV operators broadcast their own ads over those of the international network -- is another irritating problem. It violates Articles 42 and 45 of the Cable Television Law (
That law also authorizes the Government Information Office (GIO,
The regulatory mechanism for cable TV services is deeply flawed. Let's have more free competition.
Chang Yung-chien is a student at the Graduate Institute of Law at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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