Seems like the rocket scientists in the government are up to making things ‘better’. Front page of TT (8/2) says that the government is shutting down ETTW as well as 6 movie/variety stations.
[quote]The government yesterday announced that it would not renew the operating licenses of TV news channel ETTV-S and six movie and variety channels, and said the stations must go off the air as of tomorrow.
The move by the Government Information Office (GIO) drew an immediate and sharp backlash from the stations and pan-blue legislators, who charged that it was a heavy-handed attempt to reign in media outlets that are critical of the government.
“I’m worried that the `white terror’ era will return to the media industry,” People First Party (PFP) Legislator Li Yong-ping (李永萍) yesterday. “Do we really want to let a government agency decide which media outlets are fulfilling their social responsibilities and which can continue operating?”[/quote]
My only question is? Is HBO and the other english movie channels the ones being affected?
Not as far as I know. It seems to be a crackdown on some of the super-crappy local TV “entertainment” news shows. People really do seem to be getting tired of it.
I figured that HBO and the others wouldn’t be affected, but since they didn’t say, I wanted to check. I am sure that government isn’t THAT stupid to cut off all that revenue coming from those big hollywood channels. Now,if they could do something about the crappy reruns of “Con Air”,etc. I would think they were really working down there…
I suppose that depends on whether your idea of news is staged re-enactments of sensationalist stories that quite probably never happened in the first place.
Many of the other stations that aren’t getting their licenses renewed are the kind that air late-night shows of skantily clad women. Once again the Democratic Progressive Party shows itself to be no less – indeed, perhaps more – puritanical than the old guard. But this could be a case of opinion-poll politics.
[quote=“twonavels”]I guess it’s because the government shouldn’t be messing around with TV stations at all.[/quote]Yes well, if watching TV does indeed lower your IQ, I think some of those particular stations really should go for the good of the country. Better still they fit some flashing lights in there of the kind that induce epileptic fits or short video clips that cause death after 7 days.
Nude stone paper scissor and body-painted pole-dancers?? Why did no-one mention this before it was gone?? :fume:
More like the heavy handed process the pan-Green are using the GIO to target these station that have people concerned. Some people can’t get over the “white terror” days.
[quote]http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/detail.asp?GRP=I&id=65545
It is hardly a surprise to anyone in this country to discover that a network long affiliated with the ruling party and its ideology passed the committee’s muster, along with a finance channel which recently hosted President Chen Shui-bian for a one-on-one interview special.
The GIO can come up with all the reasons in the world to explain why the committee recommended against renewing the licenses of the 21 networks and channels, but the entire operation reeks of political persecution and revenge-taking by the Democratic Progressive Party and there is little the GIO can do to explain this. [/quote]
Corrupt political favoritism is what determined which stations got cut. A sad day on Taiwan. I wonder will the next cut be against TV station with obvious pan-Blue slants.
The nameless faceless green tyrants at the GIO are whittling away the hard fought democracy the KMT brought to Taiwan.
Is the news channel that got cut the one which hosted the show where a PFP legislator faked news stories? Or was its crime that it didn’t have enough information about Lin Chiling?
I must admit that I would like to see the GIO disbanded and a more independent body setup (as the pan-Blues are calling for), but I don’t see many (apart from the channels themselves) actually complaining that the ones that got cut didn’t deserve it. Let’s face it, most Taiwanese TV channels would fail any normal quality standards!
[quote]http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/detail.asp?GRP=I&id=65545
The GIO can come up with all the reasons in the world to explain why the committee recommended against renewing the licenses of the 21 networks and channels, but the entire operation reeks of political persecution and revenge-taking by the Democratic Progressive Party and there is little the GIO can do to explain this. [/quote]
I think this is a wonderful quote, which the pan-Blues love to use: “It doesn’t matter what the facts were, I choose to believe it was it was politically motivated”. Comes in useful in this case, for assassination attempts, for election results, for rape trials, …
More like the heavy handed process the pan-Green are using the GIO to target these station that have people concerned. Some people can’t get over the “white terror” days. snip
The nameless faceless green tyrants at the GIO are whittling away the hard fought democracy the KMT brought to Taiwan.[/quote]
Damn man, are you trying to be funny or is this a natural talent? Criticizing the nasty evil greens for being too much like your blue buddies?
If even half of the stations with “obvious pan-Blue slants” were removed from the air, it would constitute a truly masive cull of viewing choices.
I can well imagine James Soong sneering with the utmost scorn at the GIO’s actions. In the good old days when he was chief censor and suppressor of non-compliant media, he’d not only have done a proper job in closing down absolutely everything that failed to toe the dictated line, but would have earned top marks for his thoroughness in confiscating assets, filling up the cells of the Garrison Command, and augmenting his lists of persona non grata expelled from Taiwan. These half-arsed people at the GIO now evidently don’t know the first thing about doing their job as it ought to be done!
While I wouldn’t lament the closure of 80% of the channels currently on air, I am sorry about the loss of those delightfully artistic body-painted dance performances.
Thanks AC! I just spewed beer all over my monitor. I love satire. :bravo: [/quote]
Ah yes, that’s it! AC is such a parody of pan-blue blinkered idiocy that it’s just got to be a send-up. He’s satirizing and mocking them!
So now we know the truth: AC is green to the core, a dyed-in-the-wool bentu pro-independence disciple of Lee Teng-hui! Jia you, AC! You’re a hundred times smarter than any of us had ever imagined!
More like the heavy handed process the pan-Green are using the GIO to target these station that have people concerned. Some people can’t get over the “white terror” days. snip
The nameless faceless green tyrants at the GIO are whittling away the hard fought democracy the KMT brought to Taiwan.[/quote]
Damn man, are you trying to be funny or is this a natural talent? Criticizing the nasty evil greens for being too much like your blue buddies?[/quote]
At least when KMT was running the GIO you knew who was screwing you over and for what reason. Granted you couldn’t do much about it and the reason may not have been explicitly written down. Now with the pan-Green you have no clue who was on the “expert panel” and the exact reasons are just as obscure.
Even to this day people are pissed at James Soong for his role in the GIO. 30 years down the road who is going to be accountable for this atrocity. If you
So declining to renew the broadcasting licence of a worthless, two-bit, socially irresponsible, mind-polluting cable TV station that has flagrantly abused its privileges and been heavily lambasted by non-partisan public interest groups amounts to an “atrocity”, does it, AC?
If I weren’t now convinced that you’re parodying the mule-brained absurdities typically spouted by the pan-blues’ most hardcore unificationists, I’d wonder where you might find the words to describe something truly fit to disturb or dismay.
But now that we all know your true colours, all I can say is, once again, Jia you, AC! You are really a most effective cheer-leader for the pan-greens, and you’re doing a great job of stripping bare and ridiculing the odious nature of the fundamentalist pan-blue mindset and the poisonous stupidity of their bilious raving.
While many of these channels are sensationalist crap, any time a Government body has the poswer to decide what media is or is not fit to air/print/broadcast dangers lurk.
Far be it for me to think that any democratically elected Government, if given the chance, would favor partisan broadcasters over critical ones.
:fume: 
:bravo: 