After the great East Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011, Taiwan reacted to it by engaging in a series of discussions addressing a nationwide emergency broadcasting system. Surprisingly, Chunghwa Telecom argued that it has no capacity to provide real-time broadcasting. The burden of service provision is on radio broadcasting. However, the radio broadcasting industry does not run data broadcasting services, even after the analogue switchover in 2012. This draws a contradictory picture of the size and scope of ICT development, which has made substantial achievements in Taiwan in nearly every advanced service, except for alert broadcasts. This research analyzed the cause of this problem. A policy review revealed that the success, failure, and recurrence of digital broadcasting implementation have cycled in the past 10 years. In questioning how to change a policy issue drastically, a risk society concept is articulated with the divided governmental sectors. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel of the dark days of Taiwanese digital TV terrestrial broadcasting? Because of the emergency warning broadcasting request, the findings of this research shows that risk communications for climate change provide a reason to study and discuss TV digitization continually within the context of the radical modernization process.