Taipei -
Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai launched an online news channel in Taiwan Friday, after the authorities denied his news channel a
television broadcast licence.
The National Communications Commission had expressed concern over the graphic content of some of the other publications of the Next Media Group owned by Lai.
The
website of the group's newspaper Apple Daily shows realistic computer-generated animations of violent crimes and events, leading to concerns that similar material would be broadcast on television by Lai's news channel in Taiwan.
The online news service Next TV is to stream five hours of news programming over the
internet per day.
"In the initial stage, we will run TV broadcast free of charge on the internet, and later provide it through Chunghwa Telecom's Multimedia On Demand to their subscribers," a Next TV editor, who only gave her surname as Chang, said.
"Our goal is to turn it into a cable TV channel just like the other cable TV channels," she added.
Taiwan already has more than 100 cable television channels, including eight news channels.
Hong Kong-based Next Media launched the Apple Daily newspaper and Next Magazine in Taiwan in 2001 and 2003 respectively. The publications have attracted criticism for their allegedly sensationalist coverage, but have become the best-selling daily and weekly on the island.
Lai, who has lived in Taiwan since 2001, applied for licenses to launch five television channels, but received approval only for his proposed movie channel and
sports channel.
