Taiwan’s Public Service Broadcasting: Devoted Professionalism, Representative Civil Society, and Weak Governance

Hamilton Chung-Ming Cheng
Taiwan Public Television Service Foundation, Taiwan

Yang Lee
Taiwan Public Television Service Foundation, Taiwan

History and Background of PSB in Taiwan

For more than 20 years, Taiwan’s broadcasting has been dominated by cable and positioned as an extremely commercialized system. Taiwan public service broadcasting was founded in 1997 to support achieving media democratization and tackling a crisis of identity and diversity as part of the government’s media development. A bipartisan political consensus was reached in 2006 that resulted in adopting a corporate group system whereby several service providers and operators co-exist under an umbrella arrangement called the Taiwan Broadcasting System Group (TBS), and the new corporate structure is governed by Public Television Service Foundation (PTS), although it continues to claim a small portion of the total audience share market (0.13%, 0.29% respectively, TVR).

Taiwan’s media system has been structured by technological advancement and users are increasingly tech-savvy since 2000. The broadcasting system did not take the leading role in developing digital service expansion. The weakness of broadcasting is shown by comparing Taiwan with other East Asian countries (Television Asia, Satellite & Cable Annual Guide, 2003/4). The popularity of analog cable broadcasting has persisted since 2003, and even in 2014 is nearly 60% (NCC, 2015). There is not much room for the broadcasting system as such to leverage the transition into digital broadcasting today. Moreover, the terrestrial over-the-air TV broadcasting market share is diminished by a highly competitive pricing structure for cable service, which offers many more channels as well. Even when DTT was fully launched in 2012, it lacked a business model for multimedia and interactive TV services.

The Expanding Media Landscape

The independence of media in Taiwan is satisfactory according to Reporters without Borders in the World Press Freedom Index 2014. On the contrary, the involvement of Chinese investors and allied entrepreneurs has been an impending threat to quality journalism, meaning an independent press. The revenue of mass media has severely eroded in recent years (Carat Media, 2015). While the Internet is claiming its growing share of ad revenues, (NCC, 2014), the largest share of revenue still belongs to television. A recent phenomenon is streaming video and video on demand (VOD), which is taking the lead in preferred means of reception for entertainment, information and news for the younger generation.

Mobile media is growing rapidly. According to a recent survey, Taiwan’s mobile internet activities indicate about one-fifth of the population is using it to watch television (see, Figure 1). Searching for information is approaching one-third of the population, and social media use now exceeds half the population.

The demography of the user profile is studied by the Taiwan Network Information Center (TWNC). The 2014 survey results are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. The Activities of Broadband Users above Age 12 in Taiwan (Selective)

(%)	On-line Film	Transaction	E-mail	Social Media	Communications	TV Program	Game
	23.30	1.12	13.61	64.31	51.45	2.81	15.47
Gender
Male	21.22	1.17	12.85	60.45	46.46	2.53	22.05
Female	25.40	1.07	14.38	68.18	56.46	3.08	8.87
Age
12-14	44.07	--	5.14	79.72	49.79	3.55	43.34
15-19	38.23	--	9.95	85.08	58.69	4.74	30.77
20-24	42.03	1.62	11.35	80.24	56.04	2.57	13.49
25-34	23.81	1.14	14.13	72.51	59.66	3.03	19.01
33-44	16.09	1.05	17.19	63.82	54.99	2.04	10.45
45-54	15.80	2.33	13.73	50.56	45.39	2.79	8.18
55 up	11.40	0.53	14.34	36.77	32.08	2.19	7.14

Source: Taiwan Network Information Center, 2014.

The data show that Taiwan’s TV industry is losing viewers because users are watching films online for free, even if the action is often illegal (i.e. without paying a subscription). Traditional TV and video service delivery networks registered with National Communications Commission (NCC) are not growing in the digital age, as Table 2 shows.

Table 2. Brief Statistics of TV, Radio and Multimedia Platform Operators (Q1/2015)

Enterprise Classification	Radio	Television	Direct Satellite Broadcasting Service Operators	Satellite Broadcasting Program Suppliers	Cable Radio and TV Industry	Multimedia Content Transporting Platform Service
No. Operator	171	5	6	112	3 (MSO)	1 (IPTV)
Sub-system	--	--	--	--	56	--
Channel	171	20 (5HD 15 SD)	--	173 (Domestic) 115 (Foreign)	100-150	178
Set Availability	100%	14.24%	0.38%	--	80%	12.3%

Sources: NCC, 2015; NCC, 2013.

Liberalized in 1997, Taiwan’s telecommunication system has been moving gradually and smoothly into the convergence age since 2010. Table 3 compares Taiwan with a range of important Asian markets and indicates the share of digital subscriber line (DSL) subscribers with broadband households is now much larger than for Cable.

Table 3. The Asia-Pacific Comparisons on Broadband Penetration

Markets	TV HHs	Multi- channel Subscribers	BB HHs	Multi- channel Subs/TV HH (%)		BB HHs/HHs (%)	Share of Cable BB HHs	Share of DSL BB HHs
China	398,840,300	253,681,280	155,703,000	63.6	37.1		4.4	70.7
Japan	49,414,644	14,572,118	37,450,112	29.5	75.6		17.2	10.9
S. Korea	18,328,206	24,911,586	17,771,964	135.9	96.1		27.0	10.4
Philippines	15,864,339	2,466,785	2,575,995	15.6	12.3		5.2	64.5
Taiwan	8,097,102	6,426,310	4,855,477	79.4	70.6		19.6	45.0
Hong Kong	2,375,532	2,216,859	2,160,799	93.3	90.0		9.1	20.9
Singapore	1,211,174	958,474	1,154,837	79.1	95.0		46.5	22.8

Source: ContentAsia, 2014, originally provided by SNL Kagan as of December 2013.

Organizations, Structures, and Regulatory Reforms

During this revolution in Taiwan’s media system, social critics requested the State to tackle the challenge of foreign audiovisual culture, the so-called Korean wave, and to strengthen media democratization. At the same time, broadband has been associated with increasing piracy and digital theft, etc. In their first ruling term, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) decided to transform the state-owned broadcasting organization into a public-owned corporation in 2004, according to the Presidential Candidate White Paper of Communication Policy. The merging of PTS with the Chinese Television System (CTS, a state-controlled TV with commercials) was finally effected by a compromise reached among different political parties, academics, non-governmental organizations, and media professionals in 2006 (see the figures in Appendices).

To reshape the public service broadcasting sector, the Bill for Transferring Official Shares of Broadcasting Enterprises was born as a featured aspect of the Public Television Act in 2006 (named the Taiwan Broadcasting System, TBS). The mandate for PSB was extended into entertainment while continuing the emphasis on educational and informational content, as well: “Article 11” (Public Television Act, amended by Dec. 30, 2009) defines the purposes of PTS to be non-profit and educational, and the service belongs to all citizens. The baseline was incorporated complementing to “Article 14” (Bill for Transferring Official Share of Broadcasting Enterprises). The bill contained the following clauses:

1. PSB shall incorporate and integrate the resource of PTS to facilitate the digitalization of terrestrial TV, and to utilize the digital TV frequency efficiently.
2. PSB shall deliver programs and channels that are diverse, high-quality, and in the interest of the public. The programs and channels shall cater to children, women, seniors, disabled, and other special interest groups’ demands, and fulfill a lifelong education goal. It may set up dedicated channels if necessary.
3. PSB shall not have commercials during children programming slots.
4. PSB shall have no placement of programming and commercials by any political party or religious organization.
5. PSB shall allocate disbursements to specified purposes.
6. PSB is obligated to report its appropriation and performance while evaluation and review are conducted by the supervising body.
7. The state tendering Hakka TV, Indigenous TV, and Taiwan Macroview TV should be exclusively allocating concessions for the PTS Foundation.

The ten-year struggle to expand public service broadcasting from a complementary role to a leading role was temporarily realized after the transfer. The local interpretation of PSB was characterized by the following interventions:

1.  Support local productions
2.  Keep abreast of digital broadcasting technology
3.  Provide diversity of programs
4.  Be accountable to the public
5.  Take responsibility for research and training
6.  Represent Taiwan’s audiovisual industry and culture internationally.

To reassert, Taiwan’s PTS was established by this Act that came into effect in 1997 and was intended to facilitate media democratization. Its size was halved by a political decision regarding the multichannel cable service and freedom of press, which was glorified at the time. Politicians and academics adopted American-style PBS in the legislation: government appropriation should be reduced by 50 percent by the 5th fiscal year, and fundraising by civilian donations should be the main source of income. Taiwan’s PTS successfully passed the first three-year assessment, but turned to follow the European Style because donations were not sufficient. Currently, the revised Public Television Act in 2001 has demonstrated its strength in following the mandated principles points and complying with international standards (Mendel, 2000). The standards include:

• Fiscal guarantee (Article 2, set the minimum, USD$ 26 million)
• Journalistic autonomy protection: (Article 27, the primetime news became part of the public services in 2001)
• Collective appointment of the Board of Governors (Article 13)
• Clear mandate for public service (Article 11)
• Trustee for comprehensive business activities (Article 10)
• Accountability request (Article 34).

After setting PTS as an ideal model, similar functions of the government-owned broadcasting service were also transformed. Those services include education, overseas provision, public services for traffic, emergencies, publicity, official press releases, etc. The whole picture of Taiwanese PSB is evolving into PSM with comparative unity.

Transitioning from PSB to PSM

The digitalization of PSB is the first step to transform public service broadcasters from a one-to-many model to a two-way interactive model. According to the Presidential Candidate White Paper of Communication Policy in 2000, before digital TV arrives Taiwan needs to overhaul its TV industry. The policy was first aimed at two state-owned TV stations, TTV and CTS. These operations were be transformed into a public television system as a PSB entity. Many technocrats criticized this policy and emphasized that diversity and freedom of speech should be introduced by digital media. However, the lack of investment and effort on digitization in terrestrial TV service needed for the digitization would not come down naturally.

The private sector failed to lead the digitalization of terrestrial service, and the Democratic Progress Party (DPP) government reconsidered Taiwan’s terrestrial TV structure and digitization strategy in 2003. According to several commissioned research studies funded by the Government Information Office (GIO), and aligned with recommendations from the Advisory Group of Broadcasting Law Amendment and Taiwan DTV Committee, a consensus was reached for the following proposal:

1. Put more public funding into digital terrestrial broadcasting to subsidize revenues;
2. Dismantle the vertical integration of the terrestrial TV industry in the long run and create a neutral platform for new service providers; and
3. Innovate digital contents and services before switching hardware from analog signals.

Kicked off by this proposal, PTS was commissioned by the GIO under the approval of the Legislative Yuan (Parliament) with a budget of US$10 million. This fund was divided by three sub-projects: US$8.3 million on the common platform (including network, mast and site engineering), US$0.6 million on the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) trial plan, and US$ 1.1 million on programming cost used on mobile and interactive digital services.

The purposed projects were extended to High-Definition TV (HDTV) program later. Following the technology trend, Taiwan’s government decided to develop HDTV in 2005. PTS was commissioned to be a national project titled “Public Broadcasting, Cultural Creation and Digital Television Development.” One of the objectives was to build the HDTV network. This was the second national project handled by PTS after accepting “The Project of Constructing a Common Transmission Platform.”

PTS secured the channel line-up, the budget of HD channels, the Digital Video Broadcasting-handheld (DVB-H) mobile channel, a digital archive and the second single frequency network building project. It was a ten-year span of development led by public service broadcasting as a national transformation project subsidized by government grants, as indicated in Table 4.

Table 4. The Government’s Finance for PSB’s Digital Broadcasting (2003 to 2012)

Year	The Projects	Budget(USD)
2003-2009	The Project of Constructing a Common Transmission Platform  (including DTT network, MHP testing, mobile TV system)	40 million
2006	The Project of Public Broadcasting, Cultural Creation and Digital Television Development	83 million
2011	The Project of Building HDTV Network in Eastern Taiwan	1.5 million
2011	The Project of Upgrading 21 Gap Fillers from SD to HD System	2.5 million
2012	The Project of Producing HDTV Programs	6 million
Total: 133 million

Source: Cheng and Lee, 2012.

The digitalization project brought resources and platforms to PSB professionals to enable new and different ways of production. However, the real contributing platform to move PSB onto the internet and associating this with Web 2.0 was the goal of “citizen journalism.”

In April 2007, PTS established a training program for citizen reporters and a web portal to publish resulting stories. The new internet video portal is called “PeoPo”, a site for exchanging information and featuring local stories, public interest issues and the stories ignored by commercial TV. The site is presented in the style of exploring along with bloggers and leading with opinions, viewpoints, and a diversity of newly established Creative Commons content. Half of the registered citizen journalists are between the ages of 21 and 30. Based on their profile, the younger generation is less likely to utilize print media and scheduled television news.

“PeoPo” is collaborating with over 200 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in agenda-setting, and 15 college news centers for training. The footprint complements the limits of PTS local news dispatches. The success of citizen journalism has been proven by rapidly filing disaster and breaking news reports. The powerful reach of “PeoPo” is enforced by connecting with social media and relaying on smart phones and tablets for distribution. The annual operational cost is about US$200,000. According to Lin (2012), the launch of video journalism on Web 2.0 is a perfect match with Taiwan PSB for three reasons, first, the amount of finance is manageable for a small PSB operator; second, the majority of users are in young segments of the audience who not watching as much terrestrial TV; and third, the integration of user participation programming is being realized.

Thus, the transformation of Taiwan’s PSB has been activated by the digitalization process to converge with multimedia, telecommunication, and the internet. A diverse delivery network was achieved in a decade of PTS digital project implementation. The universality of online media is realized by the generations of digital natives now growing to adulthood. The PeoPo platform is a timely way to reach the otherwise unreachable. This also pushes PSB to deliver programs through on-demand access rather than exclusively via linear flow.

Critical Issues of Public Service Media

The channels operated and managed by the Taiwan Public Television Service Foundation are credited as the sole PSB provider. In recent years was Taiwan ranked number four in Asia for freedom of the press by Reporters without Borders. The “Global Findings” Report of Mapping Digital Media (MDM) notes that “several countries (such as Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and Chile) that have developed independent—albeit small—public service broadcasters” (Tambini, 2014, p. 77).

Taiwan has a healthier climate for media to fulfill the goals of professionalism and to maintain independence. A recent figure shows that PTS is continuously contributing to fulfilling its mandate and mission as a platform for “serving information, non-profit, the disadvantaged, knowledge, all kinds of artistic creation, diversity, and balancing ethnicity.”

However, further analysis of the “broadcast hours” (see Figure 2) shows the limit of Taiwan PSB in serving the public comparing with PSBs established after the end of WWII.

Audience of PSM

The 2014 statistics regarding genres of programming shows many aspects except entertainment. PTS is functioning in a complementary role with generalist (commercial) channels. As the result, the annual appropriation excluded the cost for entertainment and daily-news production, and the enlarging mandate was offset by lacking enough funds for entertainment and sports broadcasting (see Graph 3).

The lack of entertainment strengthened the idea of educational TV as a frozen image of public service broadcasting at the beginning of the 20th century. The branding has been cultivated into the current audience profile of PTS consisting of aging people as the majority (55 year-old and above).

Strengths and Weaknesses of Production and Programming

With nine 24-hour news channels, nineteen national evening newscasts, one hundred and twenty cable channels, over 85 percent cable penetration rate for a population of 23 million, Taiwan has the highest density of news media in the world (Lin, 2012). However, another survey says that Taiwan ranks last in Asia for media credibility (Edelment Asia-Pacific Stakeholder Study). Foreign Policy, a magazine founded by Samuel Huntington at Harvard University that focuses on global issues and news, lamented on this recently: “Over the last decade, Taiwanese media have come to be known for in-your-face, no-holds-barred reporting that manages to be simultaneously sensationalist and mundane” (Fuchs, 2014).

As a result, the TV news totally lost its credibility with the people in Taiwan. The only hope is to rely on PTS with a global standard mandate. Based on the scheme of U.S. public broadcasting, the designated annual appropriation is too little to sustain PTS as the watchdog for civic journalism. There is not enough news crew to handle the daily news and prime time news, no capacity for breaking news reporting during night shift, and no dedicated news channel to compete with commercial stations. The highest rating of prime time news (0.36-0.38) is still below those of specialized news channels via the cable service, although PTS is credited as the most trusted news media by several consecutive years survey – as in the recent Taiwan Media Watch Report (2015, p. 6).

Pluralism of Voices: The Existence of PSM Community

Looking back on media democratization in Taiwan, scholars from East and West agree that “public television has provided a legitimate institutional structure through which this emerging civil society may attempt to influence government, scrutinize and challenge its decisions, demonstrate the authority of the democratic culture, and thus facilitate the consolidation of democracy” (Rawnsely & Rawnsely, 2005).

However, other literature points out that the civil society organizations (CSO) in Taiwan after the lifting of martial law interlock with the interests between the DPP and their own positioning (Rampal, 2011, p. 92). This issue is partly rooted in notions about public service broadcasting in a welfare state. Left of center parties and organizations were affiliated stakeholders for public service broadcasting in the beginning stage of institutionalizing television. Once the governorship and president of PTS were secured by civil society organizations in 2008, the integrity was breached, the model became a chaotic structure (Cheng & Lee, 2014).

Importance of PSM Reform Movements and Advocacy

Taiwan’s PTS is yesterday’s success. The total revenue has been stagnant for almost fourteen years. There is no fine-tuning mechanism for annual appropriation of PSB operation. The government appropriation is a fixed amount without long-term planning. PTS is still not ready to transition fully into PSM. The first priority of all reforms is the financial structure, which is a well-known reality among stakeholders. This has been much discussed. The acceptable choices to select in order to achieve reform are:

1. License fees from household electricity bills
2. Taxation based on a sustainable PSB operation requirement
3. Government appropriation with a minimum amount guaranteed (referring to the amount at the inception year) 

The second reform issue is aimed at the governance structure. The current selecting process for PTS governors’ appointment is not accountable to the civil society. The temporary selection committee is appointed by parliament members without transparent and democratic deliberation. The selection committee is run without regulation and liability for the outcome of their appointment. This problem causes the lack of good governance.

Assessment and Recommendations

The critical issue is developing a sustainable PSM. These recommendations must be practical and achievable bilaterally, meaning not only for Taiwan’s internal interest but also in the light of Chinese politicization. The prominent issues to tackle are presented in three parts.

Key Challenges toward PSM

The basic challenges for Taiwan PSM are typical to a highly-developed Asian state: one is technology, and the other is political. The rapid and enormously broad adoption of communication technology forces PTS into a struggle over platform implementation to earn its legitimacy and survival as a PSM enterprise. According to AGB Neilson in 2014, the audience profile of PTS television channels is around 55 years old and continually reveals that the audience between 18 and 35 have gradually moved to internet-based video platforms, such as YouTube or other over-the-top (OTT) services. The transformation from PSB to PSM has no real room for compromise.

Although iPlayer, the Video on Demand (VOD) service of the BBC in the UK, is well-known and successful, the business model can’t be globally adopted because it has to firstly finance a giant Content Delivery Network (CDN) to cover the data usage of video streaming before anything else. In this regard, alternative thinking was adopted by PTS to cover the CDN cost, which decided to develop its online service through the YouTube platform. The next big debate is waiting in the wings: Should we choose between YouTube type CDNs or one we can manage more automatically and independently?

Beneath the spending debate, there is a test of political will for ruling party to support the expansion of PSB in Taiwan. PSB in the East Asia region has strong history that is relevant for Taiwan in positioning this in the political process. According to Kwak (2012), Leung (2007), and Krauss (2000), the major regional PSBs (in Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong) were established after WWII and have enjoyed long-term support from state policy and financing that condones their intervention role. In contrast, China, Vietnam and Singapore talk about PSB but are strictly under authoritarian control – i.e. state broadcasting, really. For its part, the People’s Television Network, PSB for the Philippines, is part of the state communication system. Taiwan PSB was born trailing the third wave of democratization in the late 20th century. PTS is well-defined by its representativeness, participation, and alternative approaches, but is weakened by lack for good governance, legislative support, and state-administrative assistance.

Taiwan PSB legislation is searching for a democratic governance approach among the Executive Yuan (the central government), regulators, the Board, and NGOs. The rest of East Asian systems are asking for the arm’s length norm for journalistic professionalism and public service. These reform movements are two sides of one-coin. The major issue is how broadcasting politics for PSB works in the interests of nation-building and democracy. The fate of East Asian PSB during the modernization, was never clarified enough before the “Bangkok Declaration 2003+10”, ratified by the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD, 2012, 2008). This resolution delivered the aims of PSB to develop a nation, a) Regularly review the mandate and purposes of public service broadcasting in the light of national, regional and global events in order to foster mutual understanding, tolerance and trust; and b) Continue to upgrade broadcast as well as broadband infrastructure, with a view to ensuring universal and affordable access to information.

For fulfilling the above aims, there is urgent need for a political process in Taiwan. One approach is to treat this as a culturally oriented issue for solving the conflict between Taiwan and China, for example, the resentment of the Sunflower Movement toward economic integration of Mainland and political cooperation behind that. The alternative is treating this as a technically-oriented issue about releasing local or indigenous programs to offset the infiltration of foreign and dominant ones through new communication technology. From digital television, mobile reception, to internet, Taiwan PSB keeps upgrading in the discussion about 4K, Hybridcast, TV-connected, OTT Communication, etc. This is the “must do” for a flourishing future of PSM in Taiwan.

Policy Intervention and Reform Taken to Strengthen PSM

The future of PSM will be healthy in Taiwan if the movement is based on the renewal of past democratic collaboration and ignites the consolidation internationally. PTS is working on reforming the codes of ethics for Governors to block the revolving door between managers, directors and executive officers in NGOs. The internal check-and-balance system will be effectively embraced by the by PTS Employee Union, which established a procedure to nominate its own candidate to be represented on the Board in exchange for the good will from Central Government democratic selection. Externally, the union has already facilitated its intervention successfully by receiving the joint-support from Union Network International (UNI) based in Switzerland. The protective mechanism has been ratified already by the Media Committee of Taipei Confederation of Unions. Professional groups are now united together to defend PSB from the threat of interference by the state and by some civil society organizations that are not supportive of a free and critical media.

Secondly, PTS should work closely with government to initiate talks with the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) of China to recognize Taiwan PSB. A model was adopted by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the World Health Assembly (WHA) respectively. Such a critical breakthrough would bring international PSB movements to bear on Taiwan broadcasting policy, particularly the United Nations (UN) related PSB organizations, the Asian-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), the Asian-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD), the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Thirdly, Taiwan PTS has already been an affiliate member of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association since 2002. In 2014, this was transformed into the Public Media Alliance (PMA) that affirmed Taiwan as a full member. There is a new trend to group international PSBs to form some policy alliances. Moreover, based on the documentary co-production credits PTS earned internationally for last ten-year, International Public Television Screening Conference (INPUT) and Asian Pitch (fund original HD documentaries produced by Asian documentary makers) passionately invite PTS to be a part of their organizers for this attractive platform to creators and curators. Taiwan PSB should leverage continuously on these connections.

Normative Framework of PSM in the Regional Context

What can the quite local and late-comer experience of PSB in Taiwan contribute to a normative reconsideration of PSB in the big picture? Actually, Taiwan has continuously faced challenges from China even recently, without trust in the past due to mutual historical confrontation. In the media industry, the problem is more significant than from the public diplomacy viewpoint.

Thanks to its mandate and professional commitment, PTS is equipped by rule of law and media democratization to gradually engage with international society more or less from scratch. The construction of Taiwan PSB as a PSM enterprise is vital for tackling the needs of this country for nation-building and disaster relief. The PTS mission goes far beyond the formulation of working “to inform, to educate, and to entertain”. The challenges faced in Taiwan are very similar to those faced elsewhere in Asia, especially, and in key respects far beyond. Referring to Bangkok Declaration, recommendation 10 specifies that the contribution of PSB in “Countries of Conflict and Transitional States” (i.e. in Taiwan and elsewhere), strengthen the media’s role as a means of communication between elected governments and their constituents and as a peaceful platform for analysis, discussion for communities to better understand, participate in and decide on conflict related and developmental issues.

The Taiwan PTS is on a journey to become PSM, and is doing that in a way that is incremental and practical. Digitalization and convergence are eroding traditional radio and TV broadcasting. The speed and significance of that is emphasized in the highly developed technology conditions in much of East Asia. In 2015, the Ministry of Science and Technology, coordinating with Ministry of Culture, contacted PTS to evaluate the possibility for launching future services. It continually believes the experience so far learned by PTS, functioning with the media governance model, has significant value for PSB at home and abroad. The current policy conversations advocating for the OTT service model should re-allocate resources from linear TV (such as digital terrestrial television, aka DTT, and cable TV) to a non-linear video platform. However, there are several pre-conditions needed to achieve this:

1. A full-fledged governance structure of PSB established by concentrated efforts focusing on the PSB corporate group;
2. PSB professionals should work closely and seamlessly with creative industry and curators to develop a workable and beneficial way for building PSM;
3. Permission to breakthrough with a PSB broadcast emergency warning message to all mobile devices when a real natural disaster hits to facilitate a successful evacuation;  
4. The international standards and best practices endorsed by the UN system and PSB unions should be integrated into the Taiwan PTS internationalization mission;
5. Peace journalism developed by Taiwan PTS should reconcile the tension between China and Taiwan in fluctuated economic, political maneuvers and the competition.

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Appendices

Table F1. The Audience Share of Public Service Broadcasting within Major Channels Market (Q2/2015, Selective)

40

Ranking	Channel	TVR%	Average/000	Share
1	FTV	0.94	208.4	7.08
2	SANLI TW	0.88	194.4	6.61
3	TVBS-N	0.55	120.5	4.09
4	SANLI News	0.49	107.8	3.66
5	ET-News	0.46	100.7	3.42
6	CTV	0.42	93.5	3.18
7	FTV-News	0.39	86.1	2.93
8	TTV	0.38	83.9	2.85
9	ERA-News	0.35	77.4	2.63
10	Cti-News	0.33	73.2	2.49
12	CTS (PSB-Commercial)	0.29	63.8	2.17
20	STAR Chinese	0.17	38.4	1.31
29	HBO	0.14	30.8	1.05
33	PTS (PSB-Main)	0.13	29.3	0.99
34	Disney	0.12	27.3	0.93
DaAi TV (Charity, Religion)	0.10	22.9	0.78
49	Animal Planet	0.07	15.7	0.53
56	NGC	0.06	12.7	0.43
63	CTS News (PSB News)	0.04	8.9	0.30
65	CTS HD (PSB)	0.04	8.1	0.27
75	MTV	0.01	2.2	0.08

Source: PTS, 2015a, originally surveyed by AC Nielsen Media International, Broadcasters

 Table F2.Taiwan Public Service Media at a Glance

Entity	Channel	Ownership	Regulatory Body	Funding Models	Business Models
Public Television Service Foundation (PTSF)	(UHF) PTS PTS2	Public-owned	Ministry of Culture	Government Appropriation Contribution from Cable Broadcasting Enterprise Fund	Product Sales Commissioned Programming Corporate Donation
PTSF	PTS HD (UHF)	Public-owned	Ministry of Culture	Special National Grant	Channel broadcasting right fee
PTSF	PEOPO (citizen journalism website)	Public-owned	Co-regulation	Funding by PTSF	Non-profit orientation
PTSF	PTS YouTube (12 channels)	Rent	Self-regulation	Funding by PTSF	AdSense earnings
PTSF	Hakka (UHF)	Public-owned	Ministry of Culture Hakka Advisory Committee Hakka Affairs Council	Annual bid for “Production and Broadcasting of Program”	Non-profit orientation
Chinese Television System (CTS)	(UHF) CTS CTS-Education CTS-News & Info CTS-HD	PTSF-owned	Ministry of Culture	Commercials	Free to Air Broadcasting right sales Rental
CTS	CTS News MOD (IPTV)	PTSF and Chunghwa Telecom. jointly owned	National Communications Commission	Production bid	Program sales
Indigenous Peoples Culture Foundation	Taiwan Indigenous TV (TITV) Satellite Broadcasting	Government-owned	Council of Indigenous Peoples	Government Appropriation	Non-profit orientation
Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC)	Taiwan Macroview TV (Satellite TV International Broadcasting)	Government-owned	OCAC PTSF	Annual bid for “Production and Broadcasting of Program”	Program sales
Radio Taiwan International	Shortwave Podcasting Internet DAB	Government-owned	Ministry of Culture	Government Appropriation	National Radio Museum Rental
Central News Agency	Video journalism website KRTC Hello TV (IPTV)	Government-owned	Ministry of Culture	Government Appropriation Special Grant	Publishing
Police Broadcasting Service	FM AM RDS-TMC (Traffic)	Government-owned	Ministry of Interior	Government Appropriation	Non-profit orientation
National Education Radio	FM AM	Government-owned	Ministry of Education	Government Appropriation	Non-profit orientation
Voice of Han Broadcasting Network	FM AM RDS-TMC (Emergency)	Government-owned	Ministry of Defense	Government Appropriation	Non-profit orientation

Source: compiled by authors through various annual reports and government publications.