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SCMP Reporter

Next Media's plans to establish a 24-hour animation-oriented news channel in Taiwan could be heading for problems with  television regulators.
A Taiwanese media veteran said using animation to interpret crime news and other stories was likely to spark a heated public debate.
Since the animated clips would be based on what journalists heard from the police, witnesses and other people involved in the case, they would not necessarily represent the facts, and this raised ethical issues.
He said the island's watchdog, the National Communications Committee, tended to adopt a more conservative approach to monitoring television content.  
'Next TV, which is likely to adopt an aggressive approach to stretching the rules, could easily become a target of the [committee],' he said.
Next Media has been recruiting more than 100 broadcasting staff, including journalists, cameramen, engineers and studio controllers. 
They will provide  live coverage of news events,  supported by an animation division of about 500 professionals tasked to put together clips of stories that the reporters and cameramen could not get to.
Next Media chairman Jimmy Lai Chee-ying is said to be spending NT$6 billion (HK$1.42 billion) on the project, and if it is a success in Taiwan, he may  set up a similar operation in Hong Kong.
Mr Lai told a gathering at the Foreign Correspondents' Club last week that the development of news animation was to cater for the trend among youngsters to spend more time watching video footage on a television or computer screen than reading text. It is understood the move towards animation was partly responsible for the recent resignations of Next TV chief executive King Pu-tsung and news director Pan Tzu-yin, who favoured the more traditional journalistic approach to reporting the news.
The appointment of Mr King, a former Taipei deputy mayor, in February  was seen as a clever  move, as he is a close friend of Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou, and it attracted a lot of publicity.
So has his resignation and the appointment of former Taiwan Apple Daily editor-in-chief Chen Yu-shin as Next TV's news director.
Internet usage increasing
Hong Kong people aged between 12 and 64 spent an average of 2.5 hours a day browsing the internet in the year to March, according  to the Nielsen Media Index.
This was up from 2.4 hours per day in the same period a year earlier and 2.2 hours between April 2006 and March 2007.
The latest figures show 62 per cent of Hongkongers  used the internet between April 2008 and March 2009, up from 51 per cent two years previously.  The number of people watching television  remained stable at 97 per cent, while 79 per cent said they read newspapers, down from 82 per cent a year earlier.
Meanwhile, Television Broadcasts is keeping up with the internet trend. It has made  more than 1,800 hours of its programmes available on its tvb.com online service since last year and   reports more than 6 million  streaming views. Managing director Stephen Chan said last week   TVB was working on a mechanism that  could calculate  online streaming views  for inclusion in current television ratings.




Next TV may push the boundary in Taiwan