[quote=“dan2006”]Thank god for TuneIn Radio and a VPN’d Spotify I have, otherwise I’d lose it if I had to listen to ICRT for anything.
I am forced to hear it once a year when I am in a Taxi, the last time they were trying to teach useless phrases in English to people, where they spent 90% of the time yammering away in Chinese and only 10% using English.[/quote]
Puppet, why VPN’d spotify. I use spotify here for only 149 a month and I seem to get all the songs from quite a few countries. It’s significantly cheaper than in the states. Are there any songs missing from the Taiwan version?
ICRT is was my “live voice” in the wilderness sort of station. They were there to hold your hand. They talked to you like you were a new comer telling in retrospect obvious things like never stand under a big sing at 7-11 during a typhoon.
In the states, I’d listen to news radio just to hear the live voice and the teletype in the background.
In Taiwan, a was even comforted from homesickness by some weird guy called “Hot Chocolate”.
Now, ICRT is either run by a robot or the live staff are robots. I do like Terry though.
Say, how much would it cost to set up a barebones information radio station based on the internet. Maybe some people from this place can staff it. They can give Taiwan news, host call in shows. I guess the most expensive thing would be music rights.
I’ve tried but literally can not find any use for ICRT and I can’t find one foreigner friend that can.
They even confuse me with the Hakka lessons, the native Mandarin speakers hacking away at English during news reports or spots, news casts on the middle or late on a Friday night when everyone literally is interested in other things than news, strange types and mixes of music at the wrong hours… just to name a few. I still keep giving them a chance but nearly always tune away from the channel within 5-10 minutes.
Besides, there are other stations that play better more contemporary western music.
Sometimes I’ll turn on the ICRT station and they are doing a segment that just seems out of nowhere. It looks like they downloaded a podcast from another country and just push play for 10 mins.
I turned on the radio last week, it was around 6pm and they were playing a ‘we live hakka’ segment. How pathetic is that, at prime time, they were teaching Hakka on a nationwide supposedly English medium
Station.
Complete rubbish. Switched over to the Chinese station and listened to a better range of music anyway.
[quote=“dan2006”]Thank god for TuneIn Radio and a VPN’d Spotify I have, otherwise I’d lose it if I had to listen to ICRT for anything.
I am forced to hear it once a year when I am in a Taxi, the last time they were trying to teach useless phrases in English to people, where they spent 90% of the time yammering away in Chinese and only 10% using English.[/quote]
In this blessed age of 3G and cars with Bluetooth, if I feel like listening to the radio I just play the live broadcast of one of my favorite stations from home.
Disadvantage, it doesn’t help with the homesickness.
[quote=“Kawa”]In this blessed age of 3G and cars with Bluetooth, if I feel like listening to the radio I just play the live broadcast of one of my favorite stations from home.
Disadvantage, it doesn’t help with the homesickness.[/quote]
Does the 3G/4G network stand up well to high speed travel on the highways and towns. I’m considering getting a three day pass as a present to myself for the next family trip. (Could it even stream a movie for the kiddies in the back seat if I’m listening to a memory stick…
Getting regular 3G/4G service doesn’t pay for me since I bought the phone company’s Hot Spot plan as an add on to my home internet service and I spend the remainder of my time under someone else’s WiFi umbrella.
Really let me know if it is reliable. I’d set it to the BBC or something and let it play. I don’t want to touch or fiddle with the phone while driving.
PS: Let us know what carrier you’ve used for your mobile entertainment. I think the phone company’s three day sim card is a fair price. It should offer the most reliable coverage? Highway 3 from the south end to Tai Chung, Highway 88 to Highway to Taichung is my area of interest. East coast too Kenting to Taitung would be a possibility.
[quote=“Taiwan_Student”]Does the 3G/4G network stand up well to high speed travel on the highways and towns. I’m considering getting a three day pass as a present to myself for the next family trip. (Could it even stream a movie for the kiddies in the back seat if I’m listening to a memory stick…
Getting regular 3G/4G service doesn’t pay for me since I bought the phone company’s Hot Spot plan as an add on to my home internet service and I spend the remainder of my time under someone else’s WiFi umbrella.
Really let me know if it is reliable. I’d set it to the BBC or something and let it play. I don’t want to touch or fiddle with the phone while driving.
PS: Let us know what carrier you’ve used for your mobile entertainment. I think the phone company’s three day sim card is a fair price. It should offer the most reliable coverage? Highway 3 from the south end to Taichung, Highway 88 to Highway to Taichung is my area of interest. East coast too Kending to Taidong would be a possibility.[/quote]
I’ve always got full network coverage on any highway here, even on the road inside Taroko gorge. We use Far East Tone.
More important question. Is ICRT needed or relevant? The answer would have to be no. Their news is awful. Very often they mis-pronounce names. Even the on air staff at ICRT sound un-professional. I doubt any of them would be able to get work at any station outside Taiwan. Earlier this year we had two people from ICRT that applied for a continuity/newsreader position we had. They were awful.
If you listen to programs from the pre-ICRT days when it was AFTN (Armed Forces Taiwan Network), 80s and 90s. They had a much more professional sound.
A couple of years ago at the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union Awards. ICRT was mentioned in it’s worst list. At the time we were doing a special program for ABC RN (Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio National) and we called up Tim Berge to rub in the fact they are so awful. We got him good. LOL
Ha, too true! The only ones I’ve ever heard with anything good to say about ICRT are locals. Mmm, red beans…[/quote]
But then, why since late 90’s to the time of the big earthquake, ICRT was all English. They were even berating or should I say teasing people who spoke too much Chinese. Their English coverage was getting better and better. They were on the verge of opening a news bureau in Kaohsiung.
The earth quake coverage was well, except the southern transmitter was knocked off the air for a better part of the day. But after that, they were sending health and welfare messages and doing real community things… They were praised and perhaps got some awards.
Then Chinese New Year… A time I dread actually. It’s the season of price rises and service cuts I’m beginning to believe.
With now warning… I suddenly noticed no evening English news. No more Hot Chocolate. I kind of liked him. More and more robotic automation.
How did they make money or survive during those years. I bet they are making a lot more money now. But it’s not my station any more.
What really got my goat is this dude called Doc. I love Doc’s from Doc of the 7 Dwarfs to Doc Holiday. What Doc said really got me mad. He said one day is some thing like this… … You may notice a lot of Chinese learning going on at ICRT and you are not too happy about it. Well, the foreigner is really a small percentage of this radio’s audience and the English language learning programs does a lot to help fund our services. So, the next time you hear someone learning English on ICRT, give him a hug.
OK… maybe we are priced out of the market but whose radio station is it. I want honesty. It’s either ICRT radio or Moneybags English Learning and terrible music with Hakka plus a little smattering of Community Service.
Sorry for my long rant. do feel betrayed. You kids here really don’t know what real communityradio is if it hit you in the face. I grew up to old time radio stations. I mean stations where there was a hazardous (toxic not explosive) gas leak in the area of the radio station and the station was set to remote and they moved the programming out of the area to the nearst safe zone. Radio stations similar to the news guy in the original War of the world radio drama. Now a days, if there would be an attack or disaster, I think they would just throw the switch off and not even care about the public. Internet is great, but it is the DJ at the mike and the transmitter with an emergency power source that make real radio .
Ricarte, why the applause. You like my rant? Are you sure you are not Hartzel? I’ve been looking at your posts and you seem to be knowledgeable about legal things. Back in the day, my job was to get oppressed, get panicked and rant. Hartzel’s job was to calm me down and wow, miraculous solutions came about. I live too far in the middle of nowhere to lobby or even talk to people.
Can we nominate you as Hartzel II. My opinion is these guys should not be allowed to retire. Actually we should harvest their brains and put them into an expert system. Just joking. He was such a great help.
So what’s your feeling on ICRT. My ex girlfriend who came to America probably trying to get rid of me by talk me into coming to Taiwan. She even brought back mimeographed community news letters from ICRT in the mid nineties on her visit home. That station’s home town feel was actually a factor in me feeling secure to come here and give it a try. I am a radio nut… sorry…
We don’t have a radio station. If the charter states that it is supposed to serve foreigners… I want them to either can it and give up, or give us something.
I am sick of listening to interviews where they never speak English when talking about the latest printer or something. Concert adds should be in English too! They can sell them in English For goodness sakes a local can get the topic. Then they should have a small paragraph at the end of the add in Chinese that says… contact xyz for tickets.
As my Chinese slowly gets better, I’m moving to Chinese radio stations for my local in car entertainment.
ICRT is alive in name only. The programming on Chinese radio stations tends to be much better, and you’ll get to improve your China too.
What you talked about seems to be that switch from the 90s to the 2000s.
When I arrived in 2000 I got the tail whiff of the propellant. There was still some (toxic) buzz in the air. There was energy,
Taiwan was a young place. Everybody was loud. Even the buses seemed to have a karaoke party going on. There were still bags of money thrown around by electronics companies too!
There was Internet but not everybody had it at home or was on it all the time. No mobile internet.
But isn’t it interesting that you feel there was a change after the earthquake. Maybe, maybe it was the opening of China, maybe the election of CSB, maybe the youth population started to drop. Or maybe it was the earthquake. Who knows.
The party seemed to die back fairly quickly within a few years. Money wasn’t being splashed around , almost no investments for years. The only white expats I met in the end we’re working on the high speed rail project. Hasnt been the same number of foreign professionals around since.
Another phenomenon was at work in the 2000s though. Taiwan was starting to become more Asian again. Millions were moving to China for work. Japanese and then Korean soap operas and music took off in popularity. Lots of bars closed as expats left to China. Western influence has been receding for years here …although…although…there is some influence from ABCs coming here in the media and promoting burger joints and lounger bar type nightclubs. Taiwan was never Hong Kong and always had strong Ethnic Chinese and Islander identity but it did have a bigger western influence once and the people did look at western trends and media more, once. That’s my impression.
But these things are cyclical, more Taiwanese are getting to travel and do work visas and there’s loosening of work permits too now, but ICRT…that duck is roasted!
Hey T_S, I’m pretty sure I’m not him. My knowledge of legal things is just what I’ve learned, either by personal experiences or sharing of other foreigners. And information is much easier to find nowadays than during Hartzel’s time. Google is your friend
I feel honoured in being compared to him, but I don’t think I can live up to the legend…
Back to the topic, there was a time that real community radio provides services besides music. That’s what ICRT was and isn’t anymore. At least not for foreigners. But I think they changed the focus to serve Taiwanese people instead of the foreigner community. They do help Taiwanese people to improve their English, even if just a little.
I agree with that we don’t have a radio station. HHII nailed it that ICRT is alive in name only.
Sad to say, I agree for all the posts here. Think ICRT has gone downhill and irrelevant these days for ‘foreigners’ here, like why would any ‘foreigners’ want to learn Hakka in Taiwan? So that one can practice his Hakka, when meeting fellow Hakka folks?! Sorry to say, but think ICRT days are irrelevant today–except for English language students. The good old days of Bill Thissen and other newscasters, when news from ICRT were actually fun to tune into. Sigh
The Hakka thing is more like a sponsored ad from the Hakka Affairs Council. It’s just co-produced by ICRT. It’s not a “program.” Just like those odd English etymology segments are English tutor ads.
I find the talking part tolerable in the morning. It’s pretty unbearable the rest of the day.
And yet… yet… there is so much good talent going to waste. I honestly like Afu! In his little comments, tone of voice… I can’t put my finger on it, I guess you can call it nuance, certain things come across. He would sometime echo the opinion of a family member when a foreigner would make an observation the the foreigner would think is an epiphany, Afu would say something like “Yeah, I guess.” You won’t know what I mean unless you married into the family here. But Afu is great. I wonder who is behind Afu. How much of him is “Afu” the actor or “Afu” the writer.
Ivy League English, would be great if reworked into a survival Chinese language course. I have to listen to something while driving. Sometimes I try to reverse engineer it. They really should have an outreach to foreigners trying to assimilate. Traffic Trainer is enjoyable. I also like Language links. I think it is an original production, no?
I have around 100 hours of Armed Forces Taiwan Network or ARTN (pre-ICRT) tapes. Found them 15 years ago. ICRT threw them out and someone called me to pick them up. I’ve already digitized some.
Here is an addition of China Night that was broadcast late nights from June 23, 1968.
