The media in Taiwan is considered to be one of the freest and most competitive in Asia. Cable TV usage is high (around 80%) and there is also a wide selection of newspapers available covering most political viewpoints.
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Cable television is prevalent in Taiwan, as a result of cheap subscription rates (typically around NT$550, or US$15 a month) and the paucity of free-to-air television, which comprises four channels. Programming is mostly in Mandarin, Taiwanese and Japanese, with some English, Korean and other foreign-language channels. Miniseries, called Taiwanese drama, are popular. There is a dedicated station for Taiwan's Hakka minority as well as the arrival in 2005 of an aboriginal channel. There are around 100 channels with most stations being dedicated to a particular genre; such as game shows, news, anime, movies, sports and documentaries. Almost all programs are in the original language with traditional Chinese subtitles.
The cable television system comprises around one hundred different channels, ranging from news, sport, variety, game, music, children's, foreign, movie and documentary channels.
The Republic of China government is pushing for a switch to digital television services in the near future - this will be provided through a set-top box and will increase the number of available channels.
There are many stations across the FM and AM spectrum broadcasting a wide variety of programming. Talk-shows, popular music and classic songs are some of the most frequently heard subjects. Exclusively Taiwanese-language stations have enjoyed a surge in popularity since the end of the martial law era and regulations restricting the use of languages other than Mandarin Chinese.
Wikipedia's Taiwan Radio Station Table (in Chinese)
There are also three English-language newspapers:
In 1988, there were only about 3,400 magazine publishers in the country. Today, the number has been rapidly increasing to 4,827 (by August 2006). Magazines are various in different contents, including business, politics, entertainment, languages, lifestyle, technology, health, cooking, automobiles, women, education, traveling etc.
Taiwan is one of the most wired places in the world - broadband or cable modem access is relatively cheap and fast. In 2005 there were 13.8 million internet users and 2.8 million webhosts in Taiwan (for a total population of 22.9 million). A popular feature of even small towns are internet cafes (Chinese: 網咖, Pinyin: wǎngkā), which are often 24-hour and sell a variety of food and drink so that the mainly teenage online gamers who inhabit them do not have to stray too far from their monitors. Taiwan websites use the .tw domain.
Due to the rapid change and quick development, the media in Taiwan have been in an acrimonious competition environment. In a population of 23-million market, the country has 7 twenty-four-hour news stations (compare to 3 in the US, 3 in UK, and 0 in Japan), more than 4,000 magazine publishers, and approximately 200 radio stations, and about 2,500 newspaper publishers; moreover, Taiwan also has the highest density of Satellite News Gathering (SNG) trucks, 23 million people share 82 trucks while 120 million/71 in Japan, 7 million/1 in Hong Kong, 48 million/40 in Korea, 1 billion/300 in India. However, in order to earn a higher Nielsen rating in such a competitive market, sometimes the shows tend to include sexual and violent contents. Sensational headlines are often picked up.
Taiwan has some online resources available in English:
Ma, R. (2003). Status of media in Taiwan. In Encyclopedia of international media and communications (Vol. 4, pp. 329–339). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. * Ringo Ma
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