The National Communications Commission (NCC) has announced two new draft laws: One for telecommunications infrastructure and resource management, the other a telecommunications enterprise act.
With these, the commission has rounded out the draft versions of its five “convergence laws,” the other three — announced in October and last month — being draft management regulations for radio and TV enterprises and channel enterprises; an electronic telecommunications broadcast management law; and regulations governing cable multichannel platform services.
These apparently complete convergence laws fall far short of what is actually required. They are too little, too late and of precious little substance, despite the fanfare that has accompanied their announcements. Of particular distaste is the tacky, populist approach the commission has taken in its preoccupation with personal capital and market competition, and the fact that the rules are dated before they even hit the ground, lacking as they do the policies for cultural preservation and stimuli for the audiovisual industry that have proven so effective in other nations.
First, the commission does not seem to be aware of where the problems with Taiwan’s audiovisual industry are. Not only has it not put the needed protections in place, it has also failed to come up with a substantive, effective stimulus strategy. Of course, the responsibility for these two tasks cannot be placed at the feet of the commission alone, but it does seem that there is hardly any communication between the commission and the Ministry of Culture, each of which is going its own merry way.
As early as 2005, the Control Yuan issued a report, written by members Huang Huang-hsiung (黃煌雄) and Huang Chin-jenn (黃勤鎮), on Taiwan’s audiovisual industry policy and its implementation, in which the authors were already pointing to how the industry was at risk from outside providers, while lambasting the backwardness of the policy of the time and the ambiguity surrounding its intended implementation. Fast-forward to today, a decade down the road, and there has been little discernible improvement in these areas, even many years after the commission — in 2006 — and the ministry — 2012 — were established.
With these five draft convergence laws, the commission has not only further opened radio broadcasting up to overseas investors, but radio broadcasters, television content providers and cable TV companies are no longer required to produce content related to Taiwan as was previously the case.
In other nations, content providers are subject to such regulations, which are designed to protect the culture of that nation. EU countries, for example, are expected to comply with the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), which not only means that each broadcast channel is required to air a certain percentage of locally produced content, resulting in a sustained increase in the proportion of locally produced programming being aired in those countries, it also means that non-linear, on-demand audiovisual media is regulated, with initial results being observed over the past few years.
In the EU, locally produced content from independent providers represents an even higher proportion than the AVMSD-set lower limit of 10 percent, making up 34.1 percent and 33.8 percent in 2009 and 2010 respectively. In addition, the proportion of EU-produced content aired throughout Europe as a whole stands at anywhere between 37 percent and 100 percent for non-linear, on-demand audiovisual content.
The commission has also declared that it would concentrate its guns only on the biggest offenders, reducing the duties and obligations of cable multichannel platform service providers.
In the draft regulations, the commission has not only abolished limitations on scales of operations, it has also said that providers with less than one-quarter of the total subscribers in a given area no longer need to report viewing figures or provide public access or local channels, neither will they be responsible for providing bandwidth for Public TV or Hakka and Aboriginal channels, and it is also to remove the requirement that funds are to be levied from cable TV providers to fund public TV stations.
It is difficult to know exactly what the commission is thinking. In its rush to attract investment, it is ignoring public responsibility and encouraging negligence of duty while turning a blind eye to the nascent monopoly the cable TV industry is already exerting on the market.
Since the commission came into being, it has busied itself drawing up draft regulations and doing its legislative duties. Although these are important, the commission has been less active on working at things that can be implemented without first having to be subjected to the legislature. It is extremely frustrating when bills are heard at the legislature only for them to not be passed.
What is the commission doing? With the exception of occasionally throwing up a pile of draft laws of questionable wisdom or worth and which only get bogged down in the legislature anyway, it does not appear to be doing what it should be. It is not as if the public is expecting miracles of it: It just wants to see Taiwan’s news media environment improve with measures that are workable, while seeing protection of — and stimulus for — the ailing domestic broadcasting industry. When the whole industry collapses, the commission will find itself with nothing to do.
Lo Shih-hung is a professor of communications at National Chung Cheng University.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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