| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 公共事務管理研究所 === 94 === The Cable Television Channel Planning and Management Regulations, which was promulgated on December 13 in 2004, indicate clearly that each cable station’s third channel is “the public channel” to practice community people’s “media access rights”. Its major purposes are to protect the freedom of speech, to ensure citizens having channels to express their opinions, and to facilitate the diverse social developments. Theoretically, public access channel should be viewed as the public sphere. Practically, due to the characteristics of local cable television, it is expected to preserve local culture, to educate the local people the functions of regional media, and to contribute to community development. Especially in today Taiwan’s media environment, most media are controlled by the political and business forces and vested interest organizations, the local voice could not be heard in the mainstream media.
This survey chose the public accessible channel 3 of the local cable stations in Tainan County (thereinafter referred as Tainan County Third Public Television Service) as study objects. There were three purposes of this study—first of all, to understand the current situation of public access channels operated by local cable television stations and how public access channels apply to public affairs; second, to propose the appropriate operational modes for cable television stations by evaluating the difficulties and problems of practicing public affairs; and third, to discuss how public policy could be extend and constructed to create community interaction and hence a citizen society by exploring the interaction between local government and media and analyzing the best operational mode of public access channel.
The results of this study indicated that due to the mutual interest structure of politics and businesses, the local government does not fulfill the role of administrator. The responsibility of media to promote civic society was abandoned or fulfilled just merely nominal by the local cable television owners. The channel for public participation is turned back to the communities. Based on the findings of this study, there are two suggestions for policy revision: first, amending the Cable Radio and Television Law and enacting the clauses of rewards and punishments for channel management to ensure the participation of public affairs; second, the public access channels of cable television stations should serve as a platform for video production for the public.
This study mainly explored the possibility of using the public access channels of cable television to practice public affairs. Due to the scopes and limits of research design, the case examined was limited to the case of Tainan County. Advance studies could be focused on the performance of the provision of programs (i.e. programs in social community education, etc.) to contribute to the public sphere and civic society.
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