In a democratic society, apart from the three public institutions --- the executives, the legislatives,and the judiciary, journalism is regarded as the Fourth Estate. Among all of the mass media, television broadcasting is deemed as the most powerful and influential medium. Since 1945, the ownership of the three major electronic media in Taiwan had been substantially under the Kuomintang government's control and manipulated de facto by the KMT party. Under such circumstances, the electronic media were factually manipulated as an ideological propaganda tool of an authoritarian regime by the KMT, the ruling party. With its political monopoly over the television broadcasting harshly criticized by the public and the opposition ¡Vthe Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Government Information Office of the Executive Yuan yielded to the request for deregulation by consenting to loosen its grasp of the frequency spectrum foranother television station, the Formosa Television, went on air in June 1997, marking a milestone in Taiwan's broadcasting evolution and generating one controversy after another since the inception. In the current study, two research approaches are adapted. Firstly, from the standpoint of political competition, contextual analysis is applied to analyze the association between local electronic media's evolution and the the transition of democracy in Taiwan. Secondly, based on the findings and insights from the first approach, a case study on FTV is conducted to further assess the significance of the FTV¡¦s text and manufacture culture along with the media effect on social experience. Regarding methodology, the historical approach serves to ground the analysis of the television broadcasting development while qualitative research is employed to evaluate the case study, out of which first-hand information as well as perspectives are obtained through field observation and in-depth interviews with the managers and executives of the television station. The thesis asserted here is that the ownership of the FTV does not belong to the DPP for the simple reason that its shareholders consist of varied kinds of investors. Nonetheless, the structure of the ownership is marked by the dominance of two non-official entities, the DPP and DPP-afffiliated law-makers. As a natural result of the will of its major shareholders, FTV's board members tend likely to be officials of the DPP party or its designated representatives. This is why FTV is generally referred to as a propaganda arm of the DPP. One of the major findings suggests that FTV has since its inception set as its priority the raising of competitive edge against the three KMT controlled television networks (TTV, CTV, CTS). In fact, in their practical operations, two major indices for performance evaluation are turned to the prime-time news reporting and the ratings. Underlying the fierce competition are considerations for ideological dominance and advertising revenues. As it turns out, the political ideology of FTV owners parallels the marketing strategy of the professional executives. Due to an emphasis upon native-orientated programming, FTV has enjoyed a strategic advantage over the other three networks in terms of market appeal and division. The study appreciates that the FTV's endeavors to break through the monopoly of the KMT-controlled networks, thus redressing the over-due biased reports on political issues and positively contributing to the pluralistic perspectives of a dynamic island democracy. However, in the meantime, ideological intervention by the ownership in the production and distribution of the programming is detected. Sepecifically, in assuming the responsibility for maintaining the impartiality of journalism and the self-appointed role of "power balancer", FTV finds its equally tempting to pursue revenues and profits for the sake of the electronic media's own survival and continuous development. As a result of interactions between political power intrusion and the commercial profit motive, television broadcasting in Taiwan has never been treated as an independent, ideally performing public domain in which public interests take precedence over political ideology and commercial proprietary rights. As Taiwan is marching at full speed toward a fully democratic state, it is worthwhile to reposition the Formosa Television as a substantive player in the process while objectively assessing the extent to which television is capable of solidifying the achievement of democracy in Taiwan. In its analyses, this research discerns that FTV had been perceived as an opposition party's TV station instead of a genuine nonpartisan mass media ever since its inception. With the DPP in power after the presidential victory in March 2000, FTV is now criticized as an official organ of the new government. So it is proposed that FTV take aggressive actions during the post-election, critical period to resolve the general misunderstanding, impartiality and objectivity being the most essential elements of the reengineering work. Grounded on a firm belief in the unbiased and yet facilitative role of journalism as the Fourth Estate, the study in its final assessment presents concluding assertions: 1. Media should sustain the inallenable right of supervision over government. 2. The ruling principles of objectivity and impartiality should not be compromised or vary from regime to regime. 3. Political parties and politicians should refrain from employing media as a personal or propaganda tool. 4. Mass media should serve as an arena equally accessible to citizens where public issues and interests are explored and strengthened in support of the democratization of Taiwan.

In the past few years, due to the global economic recession, the structure of Taiwan media has been changed dramatically. Since the advertising have decreased year by yea and opening of the media market, the world's major media including newspapers¡Bmagazines¡Bradio and television all need to face the pressure of the environmental changed. According to the latest statistics, the advertising revenue of domestic cable TV has especially reduced in the past two years, from 5.038 billion in 2007 down sharply to 5.08 billion in 2008. Even though the challenges, the media still attempt to use new strategy with positive attitude to against harsh environment. For example, there was a newspaper company whcih planning exhibitions through the strategic alliance to create new revenue. Furthermore, the television media try to use the strategy of integrated marketing communication¡]IMC¡^ to increase revenue or change income structure in stead of declining advertising revenue. However, Formosa Television¡]FTV¡^is a good case to show the income steadily through IMC strategy even then decreased of advertisement. We have found that the proportion of advertising revenue up 90% of total revenue in 1997. However, after the changed of business policy, the advertising revenue has been reduced to 60%. Other 40% revenue comes from merchandise¡Bcopyright and integrated marketing. This thesis takes FTV cultural foundation as the case study and try to find out how FTV increased revenue through by internal resources¡Bmultiple communication and innovative products. Meanwhile¡Athe study also analyzes how FTV use IMC tools such as advertising, promotion, personal selling, direct marketing, public relations to change the overall revenue structure and improve the profit. In conclusion, we would like to realize the management of media and provide new strategy for reference.

In the digital industry, FTV mainly develops three kinds of business: digital TV, network and cell phone. In the aspect of digital TV, there are ¡§Follow Me TV¡¨ and ¡§Fly Vision¡¨; in the aspect of network, there are ¡§Online TV¡¨ and ¡§FTV-beauty.com¡¨ e-commerce website; and in the aspect of cell phone, there are ¡§Cell-phone TV¡¨ and ¡§FTV Master¡¨ monitoring system. This research adopts ¡§semi-structured interview¡¨ and transaction cost theory to study the motive, type and management actions of FTV strategic alliance and evaluate the performance of the strategic alliance. It is found in this research that, after FTV enters the digital industry, the network TV and transmission stations with simpler alliance motives and type have lower performance in management and see less profit. ¡§Fly Vision¡¨ and ¡§Cell-phone TV¡¨ have complicated motives, including market expansion, cost sharing, risk reducing, technology supplementing and competitive advantage increasing; they have achieved relatively stable growth due to the longer time of alliance. ¡§Follow Me TV¡¨ has the five motives of alliance; however, it fails to reach remarkable performance because the viewership rate of digital TV is not clear. ¡§FTV-beauty.com¡¨ and ¡§FTV Master¡¨ also have the five motives of alliance, but the time of market exploitation is relatively shorter, so it has just seen a relatively high growth and its performance will be steady after that.