Sun, Apr 22, 2001 page2

• Future of public TV uncertain

  MANAGEMENT MISERIES Footdragging on the part of the government has left Taiwan's Public Television Service without clear leadership for the future

  • By Joyce Huang / STAFF REPORTER
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  The government's failure to appoint members to the Public Television Service's (PTS) board before March 1, has resulted in confusion surrounding the station's future management, members of its supervisory committee said yesterday.

  "With almost two month's delay, the Government Information Office (GIO) and the Legislative Yuan have not only violated the Public Television Law, but also shown their lack of concern about the station's interests," said Ho Te-fen (賀德芬) a member of the station's supervisory committee. Ho is also a professor of law at National Taiwan University.

  

  The role of public television in Taiwan is unclear. Problems with the budget and programming quality correspondingly influence ratings.

  PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES

  First proposed in 1980, PTS finally began broadcasting in 1998. A 10-member board and a five-person supervisory committee were set up to monitor the station's management and to elect its chairman, who would be in charge of forming the management team to run the station. As the three-year term for both the board and the supervisory committee came to an end this year, however, the GIO was supposed to recommend a list of new members and submit the list to a review committee whose members would be recommended by the legislature, for approval by March 1.

  Director of the GIO Su Tzen-ping (蘇正平) said that the cause of the delay was that the legislature had not established a review committee to select new board members. But Ho put the blame on both the GIO and the legislature, which, she said, recommended "mostly politicians, who try to interfere with the station's policies and personnel."

  "Politicians exert their influence to control the media [and the PTS]. You can see how absurd it has become," Ho said, adding that the Public Television Law strictly forbids any government or party official from taking part in the selection process.

  The New Party has nevertheless recommended its convener Hsieh Chi-ta (謝啟大) to join the review committee while the KMT has recommended its vice chairman Helen Lin (林澄枝) and former GIO head Chao Yi (趙怡), throwing the committee's neutrality into doubt.

  "If a precedent [to allow politicians in the review committee] is set, it may endanger the station's reform and future programming policies," independent legislator Chu Hui-liang (朱惠良) said, adding that professionalism should be the top priority, not party interests.

  Despite the objections of Ho and Chu, the KMT-dominated legislature has agreed on the nominations of Chao and Lin, but remains deadlocked over that of Hsieh.

  The delay has postponed the renewal of the station's management team. This has raised questions about the legitimacy of the current management team, which should have left office on March 1. The incumbent chairman Wu Feng-shan (吳豐山) has offered to continue in post without pay from April while most members of the board and the supervisory committee have refused to review the station's budget for the next year.

  Despite all the difficulties, the clauses in the Public Television Law, which limit the PTS' funds, are likely to be erased during the current legislative session. Under the law, the government was obliged to subsidize the PTS in its first year of operation -- an appropriated budget of NT$1.2 billion -- and the subsidy was to be gradually reduced in subsequent years by a rate of 10 percent per year. In its sixth year of operation, the subsidy will be reduced by half to NT$600 million.

  "The Cabinet will propose that the legislature delete these clauses and embrace the idea of maintaining the station's annual budget at a fixed amount of NT$900 million," Su said, adding that some legislators had expressed their support for such a proposal.

  Echoing Su's view, both Chu and Ho said that PTS deserved the government's financial support to strive for excellence in programming instead of market share.

  "It took the US' PBS 20 years to reduce the financial resources it received from the government by half. We should not be too strict with our own PTS," Chu said.

  "As long as the PTS makes good use of its every penny to serve the interests of minority groups and the greater public, the budget's size -- whether NT$600 or NT$900 million, is not really the issue," Ho said.

  However, Ho added that the station had allocated too much of its budget to certain items such as personnel costs and production. She said that the levels of the managing team's salaries, for example, were set years ago in accordance with the salary structure of Taiwan's three other terrestrial television networks. After cable television channels mushroomed in Taiwan, however, increasing competitiveness has been pressuring the three networks to gradually lay off unnecessary staff and cut back on generous staff salaries. But PTS's personnel structure remains unchanged as it is relatively protected from the worst effects of competition, she said.

  A report prepared by the supervisory committee in mid-March suggested that the station should produce more locally-made programs rather than purchase foreign-made programs. It should also minimize the bureaucracy involved in the running of the station, and increase programs targeted at women, the elderly and other minority groups, the report concluded.
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