The Two Sides Of Television Audience Behavior

After being separated for more than fifty years, the two entities across the Taiwan Strait have developed different broadcasting policies and media environment under completely different political and economic systems. At the convergence of the two entities' long-divided political and economic views, this research is to, through the analysis of TV ratings during the past two years, sketch the contours of current TV audience in Taiwan and Mainland and the viewing behavior thereof and further explore the differences to help provide the TV industries on both sides of the Taiwan Strait a viable direction for development.The research result indicates that the contours of TV audience on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are alike, mainly composed of groups under the age of 34 with education level higher than senior high school that are students, unemployed or retired. The viewing contour of Taiwan is closer to part of the viewing contour of cities in Mainland, especially on the distribution of education level. On the viewing behavior, even though there is distinct difference between the life style, media management policies and development of Taiwan and Mainland, the viewing volume and annual viewing rates on both sides of the Taiwan Strait still coincide with each other. Both sides have similar viewing volume. The viewing trends show holiday-oriented and seasonal changes. Also, the viewing rate of both sides' TV audience would change as a result of special events, such as SARS, Olympics and so on.In addition, with the diversification of viewing environment and the media environment with increasing channels, the program preference of the TV audience on both sides of the Taiwan Strait still reveal similarities. Soap operas, news programs, variety shows and movies are programs with higher viewing rates. However, a detailed research of the mainstream programs in both Taiwan and Mainland would indicate that the viewing preference of the Mainland TV audience tilts more towards programs on national policies, politics, holiday special programs while the viewing preference of Taiwan TV audience lean more towards programs with entertainment content with the trend of localization and political programs on issues such as political parties and elections.As such, this thesis synthesizes the characteristics of research data and reaches the following recommendations on the cooperation and development of TV programs across the Taiwan Strait: 1. because there is limited difference between the sexuality, age, education level and occupation of the TV audience in Taiwan and those in Mainland, and because the trend of viewing volume of TV audience, daily viewing rate, weekly viewing rate and annual viewing rate in Taiwan and Mainland are similar. The aforementioned relevant conditionsare important indexes for determining the program arrangement. Therefore, the program arrangement of both sides should be interlinked, indicating the viability of parallel movement. 2. Taiwan and Mainland have different policies on channel access; hence CCTV stations still have absolute advantage in the competition on channel access in Mainland. In Taiwan, the satellite TV stations seem to have more advantage. However, nowadays channels of certain cable TV stations are able to compete with satellite TV stations. 3. With regard to program content, due to the difference in channel access and content management in Taiwan and Mainland, audience on both sides of the Taiwan Strait tend to have different tastes. For drama-type programs, upon careful selection of a program's source material and content theme, a program can become popular on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. For variety shows, the content of many of the programs in Taiwan tend to wander about the legal boundaries in order to make the programs more entertaining to attract more audience. For news programs, the material and trend are highly connected with political systems. As such, the programs of one side of the Taiwan Strait should not be too easily accepted by the audience of the other side of the Strait. There is at this point limited possibility for cooperation.