The government should push terrestrial and cable television stations to produce more children’s shows, among other measures, to promote locally made children’s programs, the Control Yuan said on Tuesday.
Control Yuan members Lai Ting-ming (賴鼎銘), Fan Sun-lu (范巽綠) and Yeh ta-hua (葉大華) made the recommendations after conducting a probe into government efforts to produce and broadcast children’s shows.
The Control Yuan launched the probe to review the government’s implementation of its obligation to protect children’s right to communication under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the members said in a report.
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
Although not a UN member, Taiwan recognizes the covenants as legally binding under the Act to Implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (公民與政治權利國際公約及經濟社會文化權利國際公約施行法).
In August last year, children’s programming took up about 10 percent of the air time on 57 of the nation’s terrestrial, cable, generalist, child-centric, foreign and domestic TV channels, the report said, citing National Communications Commission (NCC) data.
Domestically produced children’s programs accounted for 6.53 percent of all such programs on terrestrial channels, 2.29 percent on cable variety channels and 25.63 percent on cable children’s channels, it said.
The NCC should spearhead a legislative effort to require terrestrial and cable channels based in Taiwan to produce children’s programs so as to increase their air time and share of domestic shows, it said.
Since 2017, various ministries have provided more than NT$200 million (US$7.2 million) in subsidies and capital injections to Public Television Service (PTS) and privately owned media companies to make children’s programs, the report said.
These measures have been somewhat effective, but funding needs to be better coordinated between the NCC and the ministries of culture, education, and science and technology, it said.
The Ministry of Culture is advised to propose laws that would change the legal formula for calculating PTS’ budget, as the current funding level is insufficient, the report said.
PTS receives NT$900 million in public funding a year, while Japan-based NHK receives the equivalent of NT$196.7 billion, the UK-based BBC receives NT$183.5 million and South Korea’s KBS receives NT$32.9 billion a year, it said.
The K-12 Education Administration should subsidize PTS Education and Learning — an initiative by the public station to make its programs available to teachers for use as classroom material, it said.
The infotainment industry does not provide an environment that offers enough jobs and career advancement opportunities in the field of children’s programming, resulting in a shortage of workers, it said.
This shortage has been exacerbated by an absence of professional training in the field at universities, it said, adding that the ministries of culture and education should take action to address the issue.
The Ministry of Science and Technology has encouraged the production of educational science films, but did not give sufficient thought to those catering to children, which it should, the report added.
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