Ming-Yeh T. RawnsleyWhy Public Institutions Mattered Before Global Platforms Arrived
by Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley
語言:
English
Photo Credit: Solomon203/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 3.0
How is a Successful Television Industry Actually Built?
TAIWANESE TELEVISION has entered a remarkable period of creative success. During the past decade, dramas such as The World Between Us (我們與惡的距離), Gold Leaf (茶金), Light the Night (華燈初上), Copycat Killer (模仿犯), Wave Makers (造浪者：人選之人) and Imperfect Us (不夠善良的我們) have attracted critical acclaim at home while reaching audiences around the world through international festivals and global streaming platforms. They have demonstrated that a relatively small television industry can produce sophisticated, ambitious stories that resonate far beyond its domestic market.
How did this happen?
The most common answer is Netflix. Streaming platforms transformed global television, invested in local productions and introduced Taiwanese dramas to audiences who might otherwise never have encountered them. Taiwan’s television renaissance therefore appears to be another success story of platform globalisation.
It is an attractive explanation. It is also incomplete.
Netflix undoubtedly expanded the international circulation of Taiwanese television. It helped Taiwanese dramas travel further and reach more viewers than ever before. But it did not explain why Taiwan was ready for that opportunity in the first place. By the time Netflix launched in Taiwan in 2016, the island’s television industry had already spent nearly two decades rebuilding itself through institutional reform, public investment, independent production and creative experimentation. Global platforms entered an industry that had already learned how to tell distinctive local stories with international appeal.
Taiwan’s television renaissance was an institutional achievement before it became an international success. That simple observation changes how we understand not only Taiwan’s television industry but also the current debate surrounding the Public Television Service (PTS). Recent controversies over proposed budget cuts have largely been framed as arguments about public spending, audience ratings and political accountability. These are important issues. Yet they risk obscuring a more fundamental question: how is a successful television industry actually built?
Successful television industries are rarely created by a single broadcaster, a single government policy or a single streaming platform. They emerge through institutions that cultivate talent, encourage experimentation, sustain professional relationships and create opportunities for creative people to build on one project after another. In other words, they are built long before audiences press ‘play’.
The temptation to explain Taiwan’s recent success through Netflix is understandable.
Streaming platforms are highly visible. Their catalogues make programmes instantly available across the world, making it easy to mistake the moment when audiences discovered Taiwanese television for the moment it was created.
Long Before Netflix
HISTORY, HOWEVER, USUALLY unfolds more slowly.
Taiwan’s television renaissance was not born in the streaming era. Its foundations were laid much earlier, in the decades following democratisation. The lifting of martial law transformed Taiwan’s media environment, opening broadcasting to greater competition, diversity and creative freedom. Commercial television expanded rapidly, independent production companies became increasingly important, and a new generation of writers, producers and directors began experimenting with stories that reflected Taiwan’s changing society. Yet liberalisation also revealed the limits of relying solely on the market. Advertising rewarded ratings, not necessarily innovation, and commercial broadcasters had little incentive to invest consistently in projects whose cultural or artistic value might only become apparent years later.
Public institutions therefore assumed a role that is often overlooked today.
Public Television Service (PTS, 公共電視), established in 1998 as part of Taiwan’s democratic transformation, is usually described as the country’s public broadcaster. That description is accurate, but incomplete. Its significance lay not only in the programmes it produced, but also in the creative infrastructure it helped to build.
We often think of creativity as the product of exceptional individuals—gifted writers, visionary directors or charismatic performers. Individual talent is indispensable, but talent rarely flourishes in isolation. Creative industries also depend on organisations that identify new voices, support experimentation, tolerate occasional failure and allow creative professionals to develop over the course of many projects rather than expecting every production to be an immediate commercial success.
PTS increasingly performed precisely these functions. It invested in script development, encouraged first-time directors, collaborated with independent production companies and supported dramas that addressed subjects often regarded as commercially risky. Over time, these activities created something more valuable than any single television series. They accumulated creative capacity: the ability of an industry to produce outstanding work across successive generations rather than relying on occasional moments of inspiration.
Yet even this does not fully explain Taiwan’s television renaissance. To understand what happened over the past three decades, we need to move beyond any single institution—including PTS itself.
A Television Ecology
TAIWAN’S TELEVISION RENAISSANCE cannot be explained by PTS alone. Nor can it be attributed solely to commercial broadcasters, independent production companies, the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA, 文化內容策進院) or Netflix. Each has played an important role. Yet none, on its own, accounts for the transformation of Taiwan’s television industry over the past three decades.
Taiwan’s television renaissance is best understood as an ecology.
Its success has emerged not from the achievements of individual institutions but from the relationships among them. Public broadcasters, commercial television companies, independent production houses, universities, cultural policymakers, international partners and, more recently, global streaming platforms have each contributed something different. Their significance lies less in what they do individually than in how they reinforce one another over time.
An ecology is sustained by relationships rather than isolated actors. A forest flourishes not because of a single tree but because countless interactions develop among trees, soil, water and the organisms that inhabit it. Remove enough of those relationships, and the forest begins to weaken long before the last tree falls.
Television industries develop in much the same way.
Writers, directors and producers move between organisations, carrying professional experience, creative ideas and personal networks with them. Public institutions provide opportunities for experimentation, commercial broadcasters contribute production expertise, and government agencies connect domestic producers with international partners. These interactions create an industry capable of achieving what no single organisation could accomplish alone.
One of the defining characteristics of Taiwan’s television industry has been precisely this permeability. Creative professionals have long moved between public broadcasting, commercial television and independent production, allowing experience accumulated in one organisation to enrich another. Collaboration has frequently mattered more than competition, and creative capacity has become distributed across the industry rather than concentrated within any single broadcaster.
The establishment of TAICCA in 2019 reflected this broader evolution rather than initiating it. TAICCA recognised that sustaining a successful television industry requires more than financing individual productions. Its programmes promoted co-productions, international partnerships, professional development and industrial networking, strengthening relationships that had already been taking shape for many years. Rather than creating a new ecology, it reinforced an existing one.
Thinking in terms of ecology also changes how we understand success itself. International awards, distribution deals and streaming rankings are the visible outcomes of a much longer process. The deeper achievement lies in creating an environment in which outstanding dramas can continue to emerge—produced by different writers, different directors and different companies, yet remaining recognisably rooted in Taiwan’s own society.
That may be Taiwan’s greatest accomplishment over the past three decades.
Why This History Matters Today
UNDERSTANDING TAIWAN’S TELEVISION renaissance as the product of a creative ecology also changes how we interpret the current debate over PTS. Public discussion has understandably focused on the immediate consequences of proposed budget cuts: fewer programmes, reduced commissioning and financial uncertainty. These concerns are real. Yet they capture only part of what is at stake.
The more fundamental issue is institutional rather than financial.
Public broadcasters are often judged by annual budgets, audience ratings or the popularity of individual programmes. Those measures are important, but they overlook the longer timescales on which creative industries develop. Institutions such as PTS do more than produce television. They accumulate professional knowledge, nurture new talent, sustain creative networks and provide continuity across generations of media workers. Much of their most important contribution becomes visible only over time.
This is why the consequences of weakening public institutions are not always immediately apparent. An industry may continue to produce successful dramas for years because it is drawing on creative capacity accumulated over decades. The effects of institutional erosion often emerge gradually, as opportunities for experimentation diminish, professional networks weaken and fewer new voices enter the industry. By the time these changes become visible on screen, they may be difficult to reverse.
None of this suggests that public institutions should be exempt from scrutiny or reform. Like any publicly funded organisation, PTS must remain accountable, responsive and willing to adapt to changing technologies and audience expectations. Healthy institutions are strengthened by constructive criticism, not protected from it. The question, therefore, is not whether public institutions should change, but how change can preserve the long-term creative capacity on which the wider television industry depends.
Taiwan’s experience offers a lesson that extends well beyond its own borders. Around the world, governments increasingly look to streaming platforms, international investment and market competition as engines of cultural success. These undoubtedly matter. But Taiwan’s television renaissance suggests that global visibility rests on deeper foundations. International success becomes sustainable only when it is supported by long-term investment in creative people, resilient public institutions and productive relationships across the industry.
Before Taiwanese dramas reached audiences around the world, Taiwan spent decades building the conditions that made those achievements possible. Global platforms accelerated that success, but they did not create it.
We often notice cultural success only when it becomes internationally visible. By then, however, the real story has already unfolded. The institutions have been established. The talent has been nurtured. Professional networks have formed. Creative capacity has accumulated.
Creativity can be streamed. Creative capacity must be built.
Taiwan’s television renaissance did not begin when the world started watching. It began when Taiwan started building.