The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday approved applications from 16 cable system operators to move Sanlih Entertainment Television’s (SET TV) financial news channel, iNews, from channel 88 or 89 to 48, right next to the cable news block (channels 49 to 58).
Yesterday’s approval, along with a previous approval granted to another cable operator, would allow iNews to reach about 25 percent of cable service subscribers across the nation, the commission said.
The commitments made by iNews during its interview with NCC commissioners would be the criteria by which the commission would evaluate the channel and review its license renewal, NCC Vice Chairman and spokesman Wong Po-tsung (翁柏宗) said.
The channel was told that it should incorporate these commitments into its business plan, Wong added.
To ensure the independence of the newsroom, the commission told iNews to make news media ethics guidelines part of its contract with employees, he said.
The channel pledged to recruit at least 35 employees in the next three years, during which it would spend a minimum of NT$200 million (US$7.19 million) to recruit workers and produce new programs, he said.
The content of iNews should be different from that on SET News, although they belong to the same media group, the commission said.
Specifically, iNews should keep its promise that 80 percent of the content would be financial news, of which 40 percent would be international financial news, the commission said.
Moreover, 60 percent of its programs should have never been broadcast on other cable TV channels, it said.
General news should make up less than 10 percent of its content, the commission said, adding that its shared content with SET News must be less than 10 percent.
SET TV would add two financial experts to its ethics committee to review cases related to financial news, the commission said.
The network told NCC commissioners about its plans to produce new programs if its viewership increases to 3.5 million to 4 million, it added.
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
Carrefour Taiwan is to begin using a new name from the start of July, but it cannot divulge the name until then, the chairman of the supermarket chain's parent company said today. President Chain Store Co chairman Lo Chih-hsien (羅智先) was asked by reporters after a shareholders' meeting to confirm whether the company has settled on a new name for the supermarket brand. In March, the government-registered name of two Carrefour Taiwan branches was quietly changed to "Le Chia Kang" (樂家康) in Chinese, raising speculation that has been selected as the name. Lo said that because of local regulations and contractual obligations, the