VZCZCXRO8891
RR RUEHCN
DE RUEHIN #0236/01 0630931
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 040931Z MAR 09
FM AIT TAIPEI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 1046
INFO RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING 8986
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO 0578
RUEHUL/AMEMBASSY SEOUL 0050
RUEHGP/AMEMBASSY SINGAPORE 7619
RUEHHK/AMCONSUL HONG KONG 0436
RUEHSH/AMCONSUL SHENYANG 6952
RUEHGZ/AMCONSUL GUANGZHOU 0148
RUEHCN/AMCONSUL CHENGDU 3003

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 TAIPEI 000236 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR INR/R, EAP/TC, EAP/P, EAP/PD, IIP 
 
DEPARTMENT PASS AIT/WASHINGTON 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL KPAO TW OIIP
SUBJECT: HOW TAIWAN GETS ITS NEWS 
 
¶1. (U) SUMMARY:  Surveys show that fewer than half of the people in 
Taiwan read newspapers.  All but 5% of the population watch several 
hours of TV daily.  90 percent of Taiwan's 15 million internet users 
are under age 35.  Almost all educated young people turn to the 
Internet as their primary source of news, despite still being avid 
TV watchers.  A surprisingly high number have their own blogs.  A 
respected media scholar sees bright prospects for Taiwan's news 
business but not its newspaper business.  To counter the long term 
decline, newspapers in Taiwan must successfully monetize their 
transition from the "dead tree" versions of newspapers to content 
providers for the Internet.  END SUMMARY. 
 
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44 PERCENT READ THE PAPERS; ALMOST EVERYONE WATCHES TV 
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¶2. (U) The global economic recession, Taiwan's hyper-competitive and 
crowded cable TV news market, rampant "pirate" radio stations 
(particularly in southern Taiwan), the growing popularity of online 
media, and the surge of newsprint prices have all battered Taiwan's 
newspaper industry.  Statistics from a 2008 study by Nielsen Media 
Research showed that newspaper readership in Taiwan has been 
dropping since it hit its peak in 1991 of 76% of the population. 
Newspaper readership on the island has declined to 44 percent, 
according to Nielsen.  In other words, less than half of the 
population of Taiwan still read the print edition of newspapers. 
 
¶3. (U) To understand the role TV plays in public life on 
television-saturated Taiwan, Taiwan's National Communications 
Commission (NCC), a policy-making and regulatory body for the 
island's broadcast media, commissioned several Taiwan scholars and a 
marketing research company to study the Taiwan public's TV 
consumption patterns.  10,491 samples were collected among people of 
all ages over 15 in spring 2008.  The results showed that an 
overwhelming majority of the Taiwan public (95.2%) say they watch TV 
during the day and spend an average of 2.55 hours each day watching 
television.  Among these people, fully 81.2 percent watch TV 
programs via cable TV rather than other audio/visual devices such as 
Multi-media on Demand (MOD), satellite dishes, cell phones or 
Internet.  Traditional terrestrial TV stations are carried in the 
cable package; very few people watch terrestrial TV exclusively. 
Slightly over a quarter of all viewers chose news channels as their 
favorite TV viewing.  The 2008 Nielsen index for Taiwan also showed 
that radio reaches 23.8% of the population and magazines reach 
31.7%. 
 
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INTERNET MAIN SOURCE OF INFO AMONG YOUNG EDUCATED ADULTS 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
¶4. (U) Despite TV's current dominant role in Taiwan news consumption 
patterns, surveys show that the influence of the Internet is 
extremely strong among young people.  According to a 2008 study 
conducted by the Taiwan Information Center, a non-profit 
organization in charge of domain name registration and IP address 
allocation in Taiwan, there are more than 15 million Internet users 
in Taiwan, and 90 percent are between the ages of twelve and 
thirty-five. 
 
¶5. (U) A survey conducted in autumn 2008 among journalism school 
freshmen (aged 18-22) in northern Taiwan by "Medianews on Line," a 
publication/website of Taipei's Min Chuan University, revealed the 
differences in news consumption trends between Taiwan's younger 
generation and the population at large.  Among the 1,034 freshmen 
polled, nearly two-thirds (65.7%) cited the Internet as their major 
and most widely used source of information, leading cable TV news by 
far (18.9%) and newspapers (4.5%), even though a very high 
percentage of students (34.6%) say they found newspapers to be the 
most reliable medium, vice 19.4% who gave that honor to TV or the 
12.6% who found the web most reliable. Interestingly, 79.7 percent 
of the journalism freshmen say they still read the print edition of 
newspapers for an average of 39 minutes each day, even if it's not 
their main news source.  Far more read the newspaper than actually 
buy their own copy - with all the attendant implications for 
newspaper circulation and sales.  Note also that journalism students 
may be more likely than the youth population in general to read the 
newspaper.  Roughly four-in-ten (38.2%) say the type of news they 
read most is entertainment, arts and literature.  92.5% of 
journalism freshmen say they watch TV news.  26.6% of them chose 
Taiwan's TVBS as their favorite news channel, followed by CTV 
 
TAIPEI 00000236  002 OF 003 
 
 
(14.6%) and CTI (11.3%). 
 
¶6. (U) Three in ten (28.9%) journalism freshmen cited the website of 
United Daily News (UDN) as their most-visited online news source, 
with the China Times website ranking second (15.7%), followed by 
Apple Daily's website (8.7%).  (Comment: this tracks with claims 
made by UDN in a meeting with AIT that their news website is the 
most popular in the entire Chinese-speaking world.)  Yahoo!Kimo is 
the most widely-used portal/search engine (86.2%) for these 
journalism students, followed by Google (10.1%).  24.3% of these 
college students spend more than three hours on the Internet on any 
given day.  An amazing 85% of the survey recipients say they have 
their own blogs. 
 
¶7. (U) In late 2008, AIT's Public Affairs Section conducted its own 
polling of over 1,000 Taiwan journalism and business school students 
between the ages of 18 and 24.  Overall, Internet remains the 
dominant source for news among Taiwan's college students, while 
newspapers are obviously no longer a popular medium for the young 
generation in Taiwan.  During sessions with the focus groups, a 
remarkably high percentage (90%) of the college students told AIT 
that on any given day, they simply turn to Yahoo!Kimo for news. 
These college students unanimously agree that they favor soft news 
over hard news and prefer graphics to words. 
 
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NEWS-GATHERERS CAN THRIVE, BUT NOT AS NEWSPAPERS 
--------------------------------------------- --- 
 
¶8. (SBU) When asked to comment on the decline in popularity of the 
daily newspaper as a news medium, Associate Professor Chen Shun-shaw 
of Taipei's Fu Jen Catholic University's Department of Journalism 
and Communication Studies told AIT that he personally sees bright 
prospects for the news business but not the newspaper business.  It 
is essential that Taiwan newspaper publishers start to explore new 
media formats with new models for information distribution, 
consumption and use.  Also, the ability to tell news stories using 
multi- or cross-platform media is very important, Chen added. 
 
¶9. (SBU) Major Taiwan media corporations understand this.  Jeffrey 
Lo, editor-in-chief of the United Daily News, told AIT that in some 
ways he welcomed the demise of the traditional newspaper:  newsprint 
is expensive, as are the significant costs of printing and 
distributing tons of newspapers around Taiwan daily.  As long as 
there is money to be made by reporting on the news and distributing 
the news to the public, he did not seem at all sad to shrug off the 
burdens of producing print copies. 
 
¶10. (U) Whether intentional or not, there is already a convergence 
of various platforms in Taiwan.  A good deal of the content on 
Taiwan's Internet news websites comes originally from the 
newspapers.  Even TV in Taiwan depends to a certain degree on 
content provided by newspapers: most cable TV news channels in 
Taiwan devote morning air time to reviewing the headline newspaper 
articles.  The TV stations, in turn, recognize the growing 
importance of the Internet as a platform:  all of Taiwan's cable TV 
news channels have significant and growing presence on the web. 
 
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BLURRING LINES BETWEEN JOURNALIST AND AUDIENCE 
--------------------------------------------- - 
 
¶11. (SBU) New platforms have, however, created untraditional news 
sources.  NCC Chair Bonnie Peng, a well-known journalism professor 
and veteran media figure in Taiwan, noted to AIT that previously it 
was always journalists who unilaterally gave the news to their 
readers/audience, whereas it is now the readers/audience who uncover 
something novel; take the initiative in posting the stories, photos, 
and videos on the web; and only then do journalists start to follow 
up the stories and report them.  Likewise, newspapers used to play 
the role of tutors or advisers to their readers, but today it is the 
other way around -- so journalists need to evolve to become 
excellent story-tellers in order to entertain their 
readers/audience, Peng analyzed.  (Comment:  Taiwan's Public TV 
station runs a website dedicated exclusively to citizen journalism: 
publicly submitted videos, photos and text.  AIT contacts there tell 
us that mainstream journalists use this website as a source to 
develop their own stories.) 
 
 
TAIPEI 00000236  003 OF 003 
 
 
¶12. (U) When speaking at the Annual Conference of the Chinese 
Language Press Institute (CLPI) in Taipei in November 2008, George 
¶K. Shuang, President of the United Daily News Group and the newly 
appointed chief of Taiwan's CLPI headquarters, said even though the 
traditional role that newspapers have played in setting the news 
agenda is rapidly eroding, newspapers will not vanish easily.  The 
future of Taiwan's newspapers lies in the web, Shuang emphasized. 
Dr. Su Herng, chair of National Chengchi University's Department of 
Journalism, also chimed in that while bloggers and other new media 
have enriched the public dialogue in many ways, their work still 
depends on painstaking reporting supplied by traditional 
journalists.  It was, however, generally agreed among journalism 
scholars from Taiwan, Hong Kong and China at the conference that 
galloping advances in technology have obscured the traditional lines 
between the audience and media institutions as the general public 
gain access to platforms where they can freely express their own 
views, bypassing media corporations and governments. 
 
¶13. (U) COMMENT:  Newspapers -- as news gathering and distribution 
organizations -- apparently will continue to play a significant role 
in Taiwan, if they can successfully monetize their transition from 
the "dead tree" versions of newspapers to becoming content providers 
for the Internet.  Newspapers are not -- and will not be -- reaching 
the same audiences they enjoyed traditionally, nor will the delivery 
mechanism and business model be the same.  The disappearance of the 
"paper" from the "newspaper" is a process already underway that will 
only accelerate as the generations raised on the Internet become the 
bulk of adult society.  Internet- and TV-friendly U.S. public 
messages crafted for multi-media platforms will be those most likely 
to resonate.  END COMMENT. 
 
YOUNG