2020 is coming to an end, and Taiwan’s media industry has experienced a bleak year. The impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic on various types of media has not only sharply reduced advertising revenue, but the longer-term crisis is the pressure to transform and upgrade. When the global economy is successfully developed and started to fight due to the COVID-19 epidemic, and the long-sluggish economic prosperity is gradually recovering, can Taiwan media see the light at the end of the tunnel? No one dares to say that at the moment.
The most difficult thing in the situation is that traditional print media is about to disappear in the torrent of technological progress. Since the maturity of mobile network technology, 3G and 4G have now entered the 5G era, making cloud, Internet of Things, and big data a manifestation. Technological advances have made the vehicle of news information no longer limited to the text presented on paper. Therefore, 20 years ago, Taiwan's paper media set up websites to leap news information from paper to the Internet, and hoped that advertisers who originally advertised on paper could put their advertising budgets on the Internet. However, 20 years have passed, and this hope has obviously failed.
When "paper is no longer valuable", the 3G and 4G communication technologies that have come one after another in the past 10 years have created the dilemma of "words are not valuable". Because when the transmission speed is accelerated, the dissemination of news messages is no longer limited to text, and audiences prefer to receive messages in the form of videos and sounds. This trend has made the new generation of journalists no longer improve their writing skills. Instead, they have to develop the ability to shoot, cut, pass the sound, record video, and live broadcast, but traditional text media are also declining.
Nowadays, only the four major newspapers and media in Taiwan have been struggling with the Central Times, United Daily News, Free Press, and Hong Kong Business Apple Daily. The United Evening News, known as Taiwan’s last evening newspaper, also announced its suspension of publication on June 1, 2020 after gritting its teeth and struggling for half a year. The only weekly groups are Tianxia, Shangzhou, Foresight, Caixun and other groups. The bosses of the paper media originally thought that the end of the paper media might have a ten-year buffer period. After all, reading publications with public opinion influence was a symbol of status and high intellectuals in the past.
However, the arrival of the new crown pneumonia epidemic in 2020 may shorten the buffer period to only four or five years. To investigate the reasons, in addition to the epidemic causing the economy to be depressed and advertisers reducing their budgets, the epidemic also caused a contactless economy to rise, because the vehicle "paper" is not only transmitting messages, but also transmitting viruses. As a result, the epidemic has caused the units that originally subscribed to paper media for customers to read, such as financial industry business halls, insurance salesmen, aircraft cabins, and high-speed rail cars, to completely suspend the provision of paper media; the publishing opportunities of paper media are almost halved.
In addition, with the rise of the concept of ESG (environmental, social, corporate governance), all companies have all talked about the slogan of "carbon reduction" and are ambitiously setting strict goals such as 2030 low carbon or 2040 zero carbon emissions. Unfortunately, the deforestation of forest resources, water and electricity consumption in the papermaking process have made "paper" bear the murderers of climate change and the original sin of uneconomy. When people want to reduce the use of paper, the first target to eliminate is the paper media.
Therefore, promoting the "subscription system" has become the only way for traditional print media to "not want to go" and "not go well" but also "has to go" at present. But what is also worried about is that the concept of "user payment" is quite difficult to promote in Taiwan. In the era of the explosion of knowledge and information, people can receive free messages anytime and anywhere, and no one is willing to take the initiative to spend money to subscribe to messages, which has become a challenge for various media.
In order to "please" audiences and attract people to "pay money" to subscribe to information, the transformation of content production has become another challenge. Entering the 5G era, the upgrade of communication technology has also made it possible to diversify communication vehicles. When people no longer like reading text, they may be their ability to make charts, film audio and video news, or record a "podcast". In addition to expressing words, print media practitioners have to cultivate themselves with more skills and become "slash life" that they must be proficient in all kinds of martial arts.
In addition to the pain of transformation in paper media, electronic media has not been easy in the past few years. Taiwan has gone from the "old three" wireless TV station to the later progress of the "cable TV" era, and whoever can seize the golden channel will undoubtedly gain a steady stream of gold flow. Now it has been beaten by multimedia platform vehicles.
includes six wireless TV stations including Taiwan TV, Zhongshi , Huashi , Minshi, Public TV, and Yuanshi, as well as 22 channels including TVBS, Dongsen, Sanli, Sci, and Zhongtian. In addition to the channels originally broadcast on cable TV channels, many channels have entered YouTube layout. For nothing else, just because the audience's habits have changed, the "Fourth Unit" that originally paid hundreds of NT dollars a month to watch, the high-speed transmission technology in the 4G era can now be watched on YouTube.
However, this is just technological advancement that forces TV or news stations to transform. What's even more terrifying is the intervention of political forces. With the narrowing of speech in green governance, everyone in the past has been in danger. On November 18, 2020, seven members of the Taiwan "NCC" (NCC) voted to reject Zhongtian News' application for renewal of satellite radio and television business license. That is, Zhongtian Channel 52 will be removed from the limited TV channel after it expires on December 11.
"NCC Chairman" Chen Yaoxiang explained to the public three reasons for rejecting Zhongtian's replacement of the photo, including first, Zhongtian News Channel has violated regulations many times and was appealed by the public, and failed to implement the journalism major. Second, after the 2018 evaluation, Zhongtian News failed to internal control and self-discipline mechanism. Third, the news production and broadcasting are improperly interfered with, which violates the "Zhongtian TV News Autonomous Convention", that is, the major shareholder directly intervenes in the news production and broadcasting.
As we all know, Zhongtian News Station supported the Kuomintang candidate Han Kuo-yu in the 2020 "General Election" that ended last year; Zhongtian's major shareholder is the Want Want Group, which is successful in doing business in mainland China, and Tsai Yanming's political stance has always supported the "1992 Consensus". If Zhongtian has no political intervention, no politics will interfere with freedom of speech or press, no one will believe it.
. In the crisis that Zhongtian is about to be removed from the shelves, Zhongtian News' strategy has turned to broadcast on YouTube platform. The audiences who used to be composed of "Korean fans" and supported Zhongtian TV all transferred to YouTube subscriptions. In just one month, Zhongtian TV's subscription number has reached 1.74 million, higher than the 1.46 million visitors of TVBS News station , and far higher than the 1.04 million visitors of Sanli News.
In addition, the next wave of "photo change" after Zhongtian will be in 2023, including Sanli News Channel, TVBS News Channel, Minshi News Channel, , Times News Channel and other news channels, will change their photos this year. It is reported that the NCC's strong response to Zhongtian this time is to give TVBS News, which has both "blue-oriented" political stance.
In short, 2020 is a year for various media in Taiwan to be "forced" to transform. Some have transformed and survived due to technological progress, and some have changed platforms due to incorrect political colors. We can only expect the media industry to get out of the trough as soon as possible and bid farewell to the haze of the "tragic industry". ( author Ren Woxing Taiwan special commentator)
