Output estimates on Taiwan's cable TV industry

Abstract

Taiwan's public sectors once hoped that the cable TV industry could generate the forward and backward linkage effects, inspiring developments for the broadcasting and TV industry, and even overall, the cultural and creative industries. Although the number of cable TV companies had increased rapidly, consumers generally believed that cable TV providers not only failed to handle changes in the consumers' preferences, but also left negative impressions on the consumers, with the feeling, that the providers are merely collecting channel fees and are unable to provide qualified contents for fulfilling customers' demands. This led to a continuous decrease in the penetration of cable TV. We find that the public sectors must change the existing method of output calculation in order to avoid overestimation of outputs, and misguiding their policy designs and allocation of funds. Cost calculation could be modified from an expenditure side, and also input-out tables could be compiled. These make it easy for the industries with the best forward and backward linkage effects to be identified for focuses of assistance by the public sectors on developments of the broadcasting and TV industry.