I start wondering what the purpose is of 24h news channels in Taiwan?
Flooding the air waves with TV commercials and filling the left time slots with irrelevant news?
Your opinion please!
Simple… Competition. For both ends, adverisers and news channels.
It’s not news. it’s schmooze.
I’ve gone through all the channels, and there doesn’t seem to be any Chinese-language international news at all. There is zero coverage of anything going on beyond these shores, with the exception of American sports and some ephemera stuff (UK competition for the funnniest pulled faces etc)
How can this be? Are the Taiwanese people not interested in the world beyond their shores?
[quote=“smithsgj”]I’ve gone through all the channels, and there doesn’t seem to be any Chinese-language international news at all. There is zero coverage of anything going on beyond these shores, with the exception of American sports and some ephemera stuff (UK competition for the funnniest pulled faces etc)
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There is almost none. The Public Television Service (Gong1shi4) has a bit more than most on the 7:00 PM news
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How can this be? Are the Taiwanese people not interested in the world beyond their shores?[/quote]
No, not really. This is related with Taiwan’s long isolation from the outside world, but the more important reason is the huge expense involved with producing international news.
At least where I come from (the US), people aren’t too interested in international news either.
Why would you want to watch international news in Chinese anyway?
Well, the quality of local news is so bad anyway and they look like made on a shoestring. Only the very biggest stories make it to them. Worse, on the hill, CNN has dissappeard in favor of a stock-buying snake oil channel.
That pretty much shows, where the local interest is.
Why would you want to watch international news in Chinese anyway?
To find out what they’re being told, to see what the Taiwan take on world affairs really is (except that they’re not being told anything, and there isn’t one!)
Also it’s good for language improvement: in international news, names, places and a lot of the background are familiar; I have difficulty with the local news, often missing the point of the story. THey go on about A nu and B nu and who was drunk and who was sitting on whose lap - it’s all bollocks and I’ve never heard of any of the protagonists and it doesn’t seem to qualify as news at all as far as I can see.
How can they expect to join the international community if they’ve no idea what’s happening in it?
At least where I come from (the US), people aren’t too interested in international news either.
Perhaps not, but at least they HAVE international news! (Though I suppose that since America involves itself in virtually all international affairs, it becomes domestic news in a sense)