Local TV show budget a mere 12% of ‘Descendants of the Sun’

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/07/21
By: Wu Wan-ting and Kuo Chung-han

Taipei, July 21 (CNA) The budget for an episode of an average local TV drama is rarely more than NT$3 million (US$93,748), about 12.5 percent that of the South Korean TV drama “Descendants of the Sun,” Public Television Service (PTS) board of directors said on Thursday.

In a joint statement signed by PTS board members and supervisors, they called for the government to raise PTS’s budget and “look squarely” at the development of cultural and creative industries.

The PTS’s annual budget has been NT$900 million for 15 consecutive years since 2001, when the Legislature last decided the amount.

The operating income (or revenue) of Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), PTS’s counterpart in South Korea, was NT$44.8 billion, some 50 times that of PTS’s budget, said the statement.     [FULL  STORY]