The cable television penetration rate in Taiwan is 58.37 percent. Most news channels are in mandarin Chinese-the official language of Taiwan-with some slots in Holo and Hakka. Public Television devotes a time slot every week for news from and by the island's indigenous communities. Entering into this mix on September 13th 2004, was an entire hour of local news in English, broadcast by Formosa Television (FTV)-the first privately run terrestrial TV station since 1997.
The FTV English Edition airs at 11 p.m. every weeknight on its cable news channel, and 6 a.m. the following morning on the terrestrial station. At a ceremony to launch the show, FTV General Manager Chen Kang-shin said it had a budget of about $1.57 million US to spend on the English-language news show. It also received approximately $2 million US from the government to broadcast for a year.
English news shows are nothing new to much of Asia. Hong Kong and Singapore, as former British colonies, have the benefit of high rates of English proficiency among their populations. Other countries such as the Philippines, South Korea and Japan have made it a point to internationalize, which means providing an English-friendly environment for tourists and expatriates.
Even Taiwan dabbled in English TV news in the past, with Chinese Television System (CTS) having just launched a 30-minute English news program in 2003. Even FTV used to run a 15-minute segment of English news, unfortunately it was not very popular with much of the foreign community, presumably because it appeared geared toward the local Taiwanese population for use as an ESL (English as a second language) tool. This time, FTV has set its sights on reaching an audience that already speaks English.
"The aim is to serve the expatriate community in Taiwan," said Tang Shen-shen, producer of the current FTV English Edition during a telephone interview. Further, the focus of the content is to let expatriates get a better understanding of Taiwan, said Tang, who is also an anchorwoman on another show. The general allocation of the time is 40 minutes of local news and 20 minutes of international news. Some local news stories are reported by bilingual journalists, while other are simply translations of FTV's Chinese-language news reports. Given the differences between the Taiwanese media's way of doing things and what Westerners have come to expect from the media, the English Edition does more than just translate the Chinese-language news stories directly into English. Extra attention is paid, for example, to confirming the facts of a news story and verifying its source before going to air.
Tang recalled one story about the makeup of the Council of Grand Justices as laid out in the ROC Constitution. "The reporter said in the story the number of members was 14, which just did not sound right." The fact was checked and the correction made before the English story aired, the producer recalled. Also, the Taiwanese news show routinely run stories reporting on prevalent rumours, whereas these are not broadcast in English.
