Taiwan Broadcasting System (TBS)

Taiwan Broadcasting System, established in 2006, is Taiwan’s principal public broadcasting group. It brings together Chinese Television System (CTS) and the services operated by the Public Television Service Foundation, including PTS, PTS Taigi, PTS XS, Hakka TV and TaiwanPlus. TaiwanPlus launched as Taiwan’s international English-language streaming platform on 30 August 2021 and was transferred to PTS Foundation operation in 2022, with a television channel following in October that year. Since May 2025, TBS has operated through an expired seventh PTS Foundation board whose continued legal authority is disputed, while repeated attempts to constitute its successor have failed. In August 2026 the Legislative Yuan cut and froze substantial public-media funding, with part of the frozen appropriation explicitly linked to appointment of a new PTS Foundation chairman.

Media assets

Chinese Television System: CTS Main Channel, CTS Education, Sports and Culture, CTS News and Info, Parliamentary Channel 1 and Parliamentary Channel 2

Public Television Service: PTS Main Channel, PTS Taigi and PTS XS

Other PTS Foundation services: Hakka TV and TaiwanPlus, an English-language international digital and television service

Ownership and governance

TBS was established on 1 July 2006 as part of Taiwan’s reform of public broadcasting, bringing together the Public Television Service and Chinese Television System. The process was enabled by the Statute Regarding the Disposition of Government Shareholdings in the Terrestrial Television Industry, promulgated in January 2006, which provided a mechanism for restructuring government-held television interests. Separate broadcasting-law amendments adopted in 2003 had required political parties and government bodies to divest interests in broadcasting companies.

TBS is a public-service media grouping rather than a single operating corporation. The Public Television Service Foundation is a statutory non-profit foundation operating under the Public Television Act. It operates PTS, PTS Taigi, PTS XS, Hakka TV and TaiwanPlus and holds the relevant ownership interest in CTS, which remains a separately incorporated company within the group. CTS joined TBS in 2006 and Hakka TV in 2007. TaiwanPlus was placed under PTS Foundation operation in 2022.

The Public Television Act is designed to insulate the PTS Foundation from direct partisan control while retaining a state-managed appointment structure. The Foundation has between 11 and 15 directors, including one employee representative. Non-employee directors are nominated by the Executive Yuan and reviewed by a committee of between eleven and fifteen impartial public figures selected by the Legislative Yuan in proportion to party representation. A nominee requires support from two-thirds of the full review committee. Directors affiliated with the same political party may not exceed one quarter of the board, and directors may not participate in party activities while serving.

The seventh board’s three-year term expired on 19 May 2025. Selection of the eighth board was substantially delayed. On 31 December 2025, the first review committee considered fourteen nominees submitted by the Executive Yuan and approved only four. Together with the separately selected employee representative, this left only five prospective directors, below the statutory minimum of eleven required to constitute the new board.

The Legislative Yuan subsequently passed an amendment to Article 16 of the Public Television Act on 16 January 2026 deleting the provision that had expressly allowed directors whose terms had expired to remain in office until their successors took over. The amendment was promulgated on 4 February. Opposition legislators argued that the change terminated the authority of the seventh board once the statutory holdover clause disappeared; government authorities disputed that interpretation, arguing that the general Foundations Act allowed incumbent directors to continue until successors were appointed.

The Ministry of Culture submitted a second list of nominees in March. A second review meeting scheduled for 16 April failed for lack of quorum after eight review committee members recommended by opposition parties collectively resigned and did not attend. They argued that the Ministry of Culture had departed from an established practice of prior cross-party consultation over nominees. The Ministry disputed that such consultation was legally required and asked the Executive Yuan to request that the Legislative Yuan appoint replacement reviewers. The review committee had not been reconstituted by the end of August.

The legal status of the holdover board therefore remained contested rather than resolved. Opposition legislators argued in May that Hu Yuan-hui was no longer legally entitled to act as PTS Foundation chairman following deletion of the holdover provision. Culture Minister Li Yuan maintained that Hu’s continued tenure was lawful under the Foundations Act. Hu continued to perform the functions of chairman throughout the review period.

The seventh board originally comprised nineteen directors. Six had resigned by August 2026, leaving thirteen still serving after expiry of their terms. Hu warned that one further resignation would prevent the holdover board from meeting the quorum needed for major decisions, adding another operational risk to the unresolved succession.

Source of funding and budget

The PTS Foundation is predominantly publicly financed. Its income combines government donations and subsidies, money from the Cable Radio and Television Development Fund and a smaller amount of self-generated revenue from activities including content licensing, production, rentals, sponsorship and other operations.

The Foundation’s 2025 final accounts recorded total income of TWD 4.52 billion. Government basic operating support amounted to approximately TWD 2.94 billion, comprising TWD 2.86 billion in government donations and TWD 81.3 million from the Cable Radio and Television Development Fund. A further TWD 1.13 billion was recognised as income from deferred government donations associated mainly with multi-year public projects. Public-source income therefore accounted for around nine tenths of recognised income, while the Foundation has said that its self-generated income has remained broadly stable at around TWD 300 million annually.

This dependence exposes the public broadcaster to annual parliamentary budget decisions. In the 2025 central budget, the Legislative Yuan cut the PTS appropriation by approximately 1 per cent and froze a further 25 per cent; the TaiwanPlus allocation was cut by 20 per cent and 30 per cent was frozen.

The 2026 budget produced another confrontation. The annual central government budget was not passed until 14 August 2026, the latest passage of an annual budget in the Republic of China’s history.

The Ministry of Culture had proposed a TWD 2.12185 billion donation to the PTS Foundation for 2026. The Legislative Yuan ultimately reduced it by TWD 21.85 million and froze TWD 300 million. Of the frozen amount, TWD 200 million cannot be released until the chairman of the eighth PTS Foundation board formally takes office and the Ministry of Culture reports to the Legislative Yuan’s Education and Culture Committee. A separate TWD 100 million freeze is linked to submission of a report addressing the Foundation’s finances, self-generated revenue, public-service performance and governance.

The Ministry of Culture’s separate international digital communications appropriation, which finances TaiwanPlus, was cut by TWD 210 million and had a further TWD 10 million frozen. The Ministry was also required to report to the legislature on TaiwanPlus’s organisational structure and performance.

The final reductions were substantially smaller than proposals considered during parliamentary negotiations, some of which would have frozen close to half of PTS’s government donation and removed almost the entire TaiwanPlus appropriation. They nevertheless created a direct financial connection between resolution of the board dispute and access to part of PTS’s operating resources.

CTS is financed separately from the core government donation to the PTS Foundation and has historically been the TBS television entity expected to sustain its operations principally through commercial activity.

Editorial independence

TBS’s public-media services retain substantial editorial independence despite the state-managed governance structure and recurring political pressure around appointments and financing.

The Public Television Act establishes independence as a foundational principle of PTS and states that public television belongs to the public and should operate autonomously without interference. It also contains a specific safeguard for news production: representatives of newsroom employees and management must establish a news-production convention protecting professional autonomy.

Public accountability mechanisms are substantial. PTS allows viewers first to seek a response from the relevant department and then, if dissatisfied, to request formal consideration by the Foundation’s board. Board decisions on such complaints are reasoned, communicated to the complainant and relevant editorial staff and made public where appropriate. CTS operates separate accountability arrangements, including a public editor and a self-regulatory advisory committee.

Available evidence continues to support editorial independence in practice. State Media Monitor interviews with media professionals conducted in May 2023, June 2024 and March 2025 found strong confidence in the quality and integrity of public-media programming.

The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2026 gives PTS News a 54 per cent trust score, compared with overall trust in news of 25 per cent in Taiwan. PTS was the highest-scoring television news brand included in the survey and among the highest-scoring news brands overall. The Reuters Institute cautions that its brand sample is not exhaustive and should not be interpreted as a definitive ranking of all Taiwanese news organisations.

The 2025 and 2026 funding disputes nevertheless exposed a structural vulnerability. In August 2026, the Public Media Alliance urged legislators to withdraw proposed reductions to PTS and TaiwanPlus. The Public Media Alliance argued that responsibility for completing the board-selection process lay with the Executive Yuan and the cross-party legislative review mechanism rather than PTS itself, and that the broadcaster should not be financially penalised for delays beyond its control. A public campaign against the proposed cuts attracted more than 150,000 signatures.

The final budget was less severe than the proposals those organisations were responding to, but the decision to make TWD 200 million in frozen funding conditional on appointment of the new board’s chairman creates a material governance-related funding pressure. State Media Monitor identified no evidence that this pressure had altered TBS editorial output by the end of the review period.

AI and digital policy

The PTS Foundation has a publicly available policy governing the use of artificial intelligence.

Its AI Use Guidelines 1.0, in force since 28 May 2025, establish human responsibility and oversight as central principles. Employees using AI must retain decision-making and supervisory control. AI-assisted news and programme content must undergo human review before publication or broadcast, and staff are instructed not to rely solely on AI-generated information when establishing facts.

The guidelines also require appropriate disclosure to audiences when AI is used in content, establish additional safeguards for the synthetic use of a person’s image or voice, require protection of confidential and unpublished information, and address privacy, copyright, discrimination, security and potential harm.

AI is already being incorporated into TBS’s wider digital strategy. The Reuters Institute reported in 2026 that TBS had initiated a Public Media AI Chatbot Collaborative Project connecting public-interest media including the Central News Agency, Radio Taiwan International and Taiwan Indigenous Television. The project integrates authorised news archives and other trusted datasets and is designed as a traceable system whose answers link users back to original sources.

State Media Monitor did not identify an equivalent single group-wide AI policy applying independently to CTS, which remains a separate corporate entity within TBS.

Classification rationale

TBS remains classified Independent State Funded and State Managed (ISFM).

Its funding is predominantly public. The PTS Foundation’s 2025 accounts show TWD 2.94 billion in basic public operating support and TWD 1.13 billion in recognised deferred government-donation income against total income of TWD 4.52 billion. Public resources therefore account for roughly nine tenths of Foundation income. The funding condition is clearly met.

Its governance is state-managed but designed to disperse political control. Non-employee directors are nominated by the Executive Yuan and approved through a review committee selected by the Legislative Yuan in proportion to party representation, with a two-thirds threshold and statutory limits on single-party representation. The mechanism nevertheless leaves appointment of the governing board dependent on state political institutions, and its breakdown since 2025 has demonstrated the practical consequences of that dependence.

Its editorial independence remains supported by both formal safeguards and available evidence of practice. The Public Television Act establishes operational independence, newsroom autonomy is protected through a news-production convention, PTS and CTS have internal accountability mechanisms, and State Media Monitor identified no evidence of governmental direction of editorial content. Professional interviews and PTS’s high public trust score provide additional supporting evidence.

The classification now carries a significant governance qualification. The eighth board has not been constituted, while the expired seventh board continues to operate under a legal interpretation disputed between government and opposition. Six of its original nineteen directors had resigned by August 2026. At the same time, the Legislative Yuan made release of TWD 200 million in frozen funding conditional on appointment of a new chairman.

These developments do not establish editorial capture and therefore do not justify moving TBS out of the independent family. They do, however, demonstrate the political vulnerability inherent in a system in which both governance appointments and most funding depend on state institutions. The combination warrants close monitoring.

The principal variables to watch are reconstitution of the review committee and appointment of the eighth board; the legal position of the holdover seventh board in the interim; release of the frozen 2026 appropriations; implementation of the required TaiwanPlus review; the financial sustainability of CTS; and whether governance or funding pressure begins to produce identifiable effects on editorial decision-making.

August 2026