•Publication Date：07/20/2012
•Source： Taiwan Today
•By June Tsai
The government will facilitate the growth of Taiwan’s pop music and television industries by drawing on the country’s wealth of creative talent and advantages as a free democracy, ROC Culture Minister Lung Ying-tai said July 19.
“The Ministry of Culture will work to improve the environment for cultivating talent and help relax regulations for the benefit of effective marketing,” Lung said at an MOC-planned national forum on Taiwan’s music and television industry in Taipei City.
Singer and producer Huang Shu-jun said a free environment inspires Taiwan’s young people to participate in pop music performance and production, and has helped the country maintain its leading role in shaping popular music tastes in the Chinese-speaking world for several decades.
Concert promoter Ason Chen agreed that talent should take precedence over the industry. “Putting a priority on centralized management of the industry would just kill creativity and appreciation of its worth from the get-go,” he said.
Regarding the nation’s TV industry, Chang Cheng-fen, Sanlih E-Television deputy general manager, argued that the sector is plagued by lack of funding and a talent drain.
“Taiwan relies on buying programs from South Korea and mainland China, leading to a reduced number of productions and loss of revenue in a field where Taiwan has the potential to make it big,” she said.
According to Chang, the value of South Korea’s TV drama exports for 2011 exceeded NT$7.5 billion (US$250 million), compared to Taiwan’s NT$1.2 billion.
She said the government needs to consider ways to integrate public and private resources for distributing good Taiwan products, whether TV programs or commodities, to the rest of the world.
A good way to start would be to relax rules on product placement, Chang said. “Product placement in TV dramas is a great way to promote local brands, but unlike South Korea, which encourages this form of advertising through tax deductions, in Taiwan you face fines for it.”
Forum participants also urged the government to help solve issues related to the unfair treatment Taiwan-made TV programs face in trying to reach mainland Chinese audiences, and to make sure the intellectual property rights of these shows are not violated.
