張時健

Shih-Chen Chang

外製外包 ； 政治經濟學 ； 商品化 ； 節目製作業 ； 廣告化

outsourcing ； political economy ； commodification ； independent production house

台灣的電視事業發展至今四十餘年，但節目表現並不令人滿意。本文以批判的傳播政治經濟學立場出發，探尋其中原因。本文指出，在早年三台壟斷時期，節目生產的責任主要不是由電視台負擔，而是由為數眾多的小規模外包傳播公司製作負責，因而導致節目內容貧乏並與廣告合流。在有線電視開放後，節目製作又因頻道過度競爭而稀釋資源，且廣告主藉用理性化的收視率標準進行聯合購買，造成廣告化日益嚴重。本文認為，電視節目作為商品的體系中，消費者其實是廣告業主而非閱聽眾，此項生產結構必須放在資本主義發展體系中去理解。

The emergence of the TV industry in Taiwan is more than 40 years, but people here could hardly enjoy good TV programs. This article aims to explain Taiwan's TV production phenomena from the perspective of critical political economy of communication. This paper argues that none of the three major TV stations produced sufficient programs itself when they monopolized TV broadcasting in Taiwan. Instead, production tasks were outsourcing to many small independent production houses. And this is one of the reasons why the quality of Taiwan's TV programs was poor. After cable TV entered the market, there existed too many competing channels struggling for limited resources. In this period, advertisers unified and used TV ratings in media buying. This made many TV programs more like advertisements. In conclusion, the problems of Taiwan's TV industry were related to the historical context and certain structural factors that have to be placed in a wider capitalist system to understand its dynamics.