In recognition of the public's need for varied and expanded TV services of better quality, in 1982 the ROC Government Information Office (GIO) convened a group of seven experts in mass communications to make recommendations on the further development of TV broadcasting in Taiwan. The group was headed by Professor Chang Chi-kao, the GIO's planning consultant for public TV. He was joined by TV professionals and university professors in the communications field, including Ho Yi-mou, the former general manager of TTV who now teaches at Chinese Culture University.
After four meetings in 1982, the group gave the GIO the following recommendations concerning cable TV:
• Cable TV, for a variety of reasons, was viewed as the best way to develop TV communications;
• It should therefore incorporate facilities for other communications needs, including the growing information industry;
• It should be operated by the private sector with the help of local government and be subject to central government regulation;
• Cable TV stations should be set up at the level of the provincially administered or centrally administered municipality, with no limit on the area covered by the cable service;
• Applicants for a cable TV operator's license should have professional broadcasting experience (some panel members suggested that existing TV or radio stations be allowed to take up a certain percentage of the investment in a new station); and
• Cable TV operators should be permitted to produce commercial films and charge fees for their use.
In July 1983, the ministers of Economics and of Communications joined with the director-general of the GIO in agreeing that cable TV would be the best communications vehicle to serve the public's expanding needs for information, education, and entertainment—and that it would also help to put the illegal cable channel then operating out of business.
The next month, August 1983, the Executive Yuan set up a Cable TV System Working Group headed by the deputy minister of communications. The group set to work studying technical, economic, educational, and other practical aspects of cable TV. In February 1985, after over a year and a half of work, a series of eighty reports had been produced, totaling perhaps 3,000 pages on nearly every aspect of cable TV. Despite the daunting amount of research and reporting, not much actually happened to develop cable TV at the time. In the years after the reports were finished, it seems that the energies of TV developers focused instead on public TV, which made some significant early steps in the mid 1980s.
One of the monuments left behind by the cable TV system working group was a major survey of residents in Taipei and its suburbs. The survey is a benchmark of the TV behavior and preferences of people in the Taipei area. The study, which has not been equaled since in size and comprehensiveness, gives some basis for making estimates where more recent data are unavailable and helps to evaluate more recent information.
The cause of cable TV was taken up once more with vigor in May 1989, when the Executive Yuan charged the GIO and the Directorate General of Telecommunications of the Ministry of Communications with the joint responsibility for making several major decisions about how to make cable TV a reality. The agencies were to decide if cable TV should be established by the government alone, by a joint government-private effort, or by the private sector under government regulation. The strategy of development was to mount a pilot effort, then broaden the effort after it was progressing smoothly.
The government also set up a cabinet-level Cable TV Task Force composed of officials from the Council for Economic Planning and Development, the Directorate General of Telecommunications of the Ministry of Communications, and the Telecommunications Research Institute. Two subcommittees in the task force are working on legislation and on planning.
The task force is considering whether the government should license cable TV operators according to administrative jurisdictions (such as city, county, and township), by concentrations of population, or by households. It will also spell out the qualifications of applicants for cable TV licenses. The task force is working on a tight schedule. It calls for all cable TV planning to be finished in 1991, and detailed legislation on cable TV is also to be issued in final form in 1991. Officials expect that in 1992 a cable TV system with ten to twenty stations and as many channels will be put into operation.
"They're he-e-re..."—cable TV allows users to access computer data banks with interactive TV.
The cable TV business will probably evolve into four types of enterprises when the industry is established in 1992: the cable operator who invests in the physical facility and sets it up; the cable provider who manages the cable facility and sells its services; the producer of cable TV programming; and the enterprise that sells the TV programming. The creation of this new entrepreneurial setup should significantly boost the value of TV for entertainment and for information and education.
But is the public interested in cable TV? Some recent information on whether the public would be willing to support cable TV after years of free viewing was derived from a recent survey. Conducted by the United Daily News Group's Opinion Research Center on May 5-6, 1990, the survey was sponsored by the Chinese daily newspaper Min Sheng Pao. The Research Center made an islandwide telephone survey about the cable TV market and obtained 1,143 valid responses, equally divided between men and women. The main results were as follows:
• 40 percent were willing to pay for cable TV;
• 28 percent said they would await future developments before deciding whether they would be willing to pay for cable TV;
• 21 percent were unwilling to subscribe to cable TV.
• 60 percent had no idea what monthly fee would be acceptable;
• 37 percent were willing to pay up to US$37 per month for cable TV;
• Over 51 percent said cable TV must be a lot more varied and open to new things than the existing commercial TV stations;
• 47 percent said cable TV should transmit adult movies; and
• 36 percent did not want cable TV to carry adult movies.
Media industry experts say that the cable TV industry would not be able to make a profit if subscribers were only willing to pay US$37 per month. Even in the 1985 studies of the economics of the industry, it was indicated that a monthly fee of US$55 represented the cable TV industry's break-even point under the circumstances envisaged at the time. Today, however, it is felt that the industry can carry a deficit operation for a couple of years in the expectation that subscription revenues will increase once cable TV proves its value. When this happens, more people will subscribe, and they will be willing to pay more than the fee indicated in the survey.
As the Opinion Center's recent survey indicates, 60 percent of the public had no idea of what monthly subscriber fee would be appropriate because they had very limited knowledge of the value of cable TV. Once people know more about cable TV, a major portion of the 28 percent with the wait-and-see attitude may well be interested in subscribing. At least there is a large reservoir of potential support for cable TV which can be tapped once it begins operation. As per capita income continues to rise in Taiwan, cable TV may attract more of people's increased disposable income. Furthermore, market analysts think that cable TV can cut into the lucrative videotape market and siphon off some of the large amounts of money spent to buy or rent videotapes of movies and other viewing fare.
There is still another cause for optimism about the economic future of cable TV. People now have more leisure time as a reward for their economic success [see the FCR articles on leisure, July 1990]. ROC government studies in 1987 on the use of leisure time by Taiwan residents show that one-third of the public's free time of about six hours daily is used to watch TV, even in an era of mediocre commercial TV fare and limited viewing hours. As more free time becomes available, the TV viewing hours of Taiwan residents can be expected to increase at least proportionately.
Despite gaps in knowledge about the cable TV market, there are good indications people will gain more free time, and that a large percent of this time will be spent watching TV. Result? There will be more people spending more time watching TV with more money in their pockets to pay more for the greater quantity, quality, and variety of programming available through cable TV. But the future of cable TV depends on the quantity and quality of programming the investors provide. While there seems to be little doubt of the quality and efficiency of the future cable TV delivery system, the same measure of confidence cannot be expressed for the software aspect. It is not yet known if local cable TV will have the news, sports, films, music, information, and adult films programming (and public access TV) that is common in other countries.
The Cable TV Task Force is still generating information for the development of cable TV legislation, which is supposed to be drafted by early August 1990 and promulgated in final form in 1991. The remaining work to be done includes technical standards and quality control for the cable TV facilities and many other matters. The task force is soliciting the opinions of varied groups on cable TV issues, including officials from the three commercial TV stations, scholars and experts, consumer groups, telecommunications experts, hotel people, and businessmen in various fields.
Stay tuned, the viewing fare could improve—cable TV may soon be offering a greater variety of services and specialized programs.
A cable TV network called "Channel 4" already exists in Taiwan, focused mainly in the Taipei area. Not the least of the problems with this system is that it is completely illegal. Channel 4 is set up like the usual cable TV station—a headend which originates the programming; a distribution system which carries the headend's programming via coaxial cable to the various areas where subscribers are located; and a subscriber drop which carries the programming from the distribution system cable into the subscriber's location and wires it up into the receiving TV set. But apparently the wiring job is below standard so that reception is sometimes poor, especially in bad weather.
Marketing follows a typical pattern: a Channel 4 agent appears at the door of an apartment or home and offers the service to the resident for an installation fee of US$37 to US$74 and a monthly fee of half the given amount. There are no surcharges for special TV programming.
Channel 4 offers several viewing choices, including continuous stock market reporting, 24-hour CNN news, Japanese serials with Chinese subtitles, and both R and X-rated movies. Some of these programs originate from the Japanese satellite which the Channel 4 headend receives with a dish antenna and transmits over its coaxial cable distribution system. Other programs such as the Japanese serials are brought to Taiwan on videotape and sent out from the Channel 4 headend. The material taken from the Japanese satellite is part of the fare which can be received by people equipped to receive the two channels broadcast from a Japanese satellite by the Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), which is the Japanese equivalent of the BBC.
The Japanese have established a strong TV presence in Taiwan, considering that their programming has less drawing power than American TV programs. NHK has an office in Taipei, and it has arranged for several high-quality Japanese programs to be telecast on Taiwan TV. What is more, the two NHK channels transmitted by Japanese satellite can currently be received by a KU-Band satellite dish.
But NHK does not get any revenue from this operation, neither from the sales of the equipment, nor from the public's viewing of the NHK material. Nevertheless, the programs on the two NHK channels are listed daily in the English-language China News and in several of Taipei's Chinese dailies, so that even people who do not have NHK reception capability are exposed to information about its offerings.
The two NHK satellite-broadcast channels both appear to be on the air 24 hours a day, but they serve separate programming objectives. The first, listed as Channel 11 in daily TV listings, has a varied menu of drama, features, instructional shows, music, cartoons, and prime-time movies. The other, called Channel 15, is aimed at a more international audience, with heavy doses of news shows in the original languages from the USSR, mainland China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, the UK, Japan, and the U.S. (CNN). The only problem is that many of the foreign language news shows are supplemented by a loud Japanese voice-over, making it extremely difficult to understand what is being said in either language.
While it does not pay off now, the NHK presence is expected to yield dividends in the future. Active but careful preparation of the groundwork is characteristic of NHK's approach to cable TV in Taiwan. The corporation has considerable interest in cultivating Taiwan's market, but it also intends to be thoroughly conversant with all the details before it initiates concrete involvement in a cable TV operation. Among other things, HK is waiting to see the specifics of cable TV legislation due in 1991.
NHK may be able to play a major role in Taiwan TV, including cable TV, because of its major interest in the cultural field, coupled with its special mainland China media projects. NHK is planning a major media center in Peking, including 340 rooms and facilities for broadcasting, satellite transmission, fax and telex, and housing for temporary and permanent media people. These facilities may give NHK the capability of helping the ROC carry out future projects in culture and international relations, projects that have been given high priority by the government. The NHK is therefore positioned to play an important intermediary role in the provision of mainland China cultural programming to Taiwan TV, and vice-versa.
Cable TV has the potential to offer an impressive variety of services in the future. It might carry broadcast TV to areas such as Hualien where commercial TV reception is somewhat erratic and substandard. It can offer special cable channels for telex services, satellite relays, TV classrooms of the air community service public access channels and 24-hour news services. It could also provide weather reporting channels for the general public as well as for specialized users such as fishing vessels, and more ordinary fare such as public affairs programming. On the hardware side of the picture, the Directorate General of Telecommunications has a ten-year improvement plan to switch over from ordinary cable to fiber-optic communications. This would vastly increase cable-carrying capacity.
Cable TV of tomorrow may also feature interactive TV, including electronic banking and shopping, telecommunications for meetings, and teleconferencing with optional printouts of documents at either end. The possibilities in the field are wide open. Both the government and the people have the opportunity to tie into the cutting-edge of TV technology, and when interactive TV is eventually linked with computer information services, a whole new field for cable TV will open up—just what the ROC needs to facilitate its integration into the global village.—Wu Huei-fang is a co-producer in the Public TV Group of the Broadcasting Development Fund, a non-profit corporation in Taipei.