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NCC¡¦s media bill
unworkable: lawmaker
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
The National Communications Commission¡¦s (NCC) draft anti-monopoly media bill
was hastily formulated to deal with a review of the nation¡¦s compliance with a
pair of international covenants by an international panel, a lawmaker claimed
yesterday.
The draft bill tries to tackle the issue, but uses the wrong formula to
calculate monopolization under which ¡§no media merger would be defined as a
monopoly,¡¨ Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Cheng Li-chiun (¾GÄR§g) said.
Cheng said she suspected the commission submitted the draft because a group of
international experts is scheduled to review Taiwan¡¦s compliance with the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights between Monday and Wednesday.
The issue of a monopoly in the media is likely one of the major issues the panel
would scrutinize, Cheng said.
Under the draft, which the commission announced on Wednesday, a monopoly would
be calculated by combined audience rating rather than combined market share.
For merger of print media and electronic media, for example, a merger with a
combined ¡§influence¡¨ of 20 percent would be rejected.
Cheng said that audience ratings would not be able to reflect the true market as
the combined audience ratings of all television channels during peak time is
about 30 percent and the combined ratings of all television news channels is
only about 3 percent, lower than the 5 percent ¡§red line¡¨ for the merger of TV
news channels.
¡§Simply put, the bill is unworkable,¡¨ Cheng said.
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