INTERVIEW

In a way, we provided a lot of service to let them have confidence and comfort so that they would not be worried about the aftermath of the earthquake. As we like to say, we are like a small United Nations, with 16 different languages, so we really have stories coming from everywhere in the world, which are gathered in this book.

CP: Do you believe that publishing this book contributes to nurture the trust relationship with your audience? Are you also doing other things to strengthen people’s trust in Rti?

CH: Yes we do, in different ways. For example, we have several listeners clubs in different parts of the world. It is a very important way that we engage with our listeners. From time to time, it is a way through which we interact with our listeners.

But we have other ways to get in touch with them. For example, during the COVID time, we asked our audience to send a postcard which tells a story. And we actually received a lot of them. For example, someone in India was bringing medicine to sick people took a picture of that, they made it into a postcard and sent it to us. Like this, it became a story. This is how we engage with them.

“Through all the stories collected in this book, we hope to show that Rti is a very important public broadcaster in Taiwan.” – Carlos Chia-Shan Huang, Manager of Rti’s International Language division. 

When Taiwan celebrated its 100th anniversary, we called for postcards or paintings from around the world with drawings of how our audience was picturing Taiwan. We created this competition, with a cash price including a day out in Taiwan. And we received thousands and thousands of postcards. We had one night at Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall where we showed the collection of drawings on the walls.

So I believe that in general we are quite special with the way we engage with our listeners. We have a department which is called audience research session, which is responsible for answering letters from our listeners worldwide. And then of course we have Rti’s listeners clubs spread out across the globe. These clubs are run by the listeners themselves. Initially we do not have any contact with them in the sense that we do not regulate them or anything. It really is Rti listeners getting together, and when we travel to different countries we meet them and exchange about Rti and what we do.

CP: How do you envision this book contributing to your future engagement with the audience?

CH: This book is published in Mandarin Chinese and the number one priority is to inform the public in Taiwan, which is not so much aware of what we have been doing. We want to let them know what Rti has been doing to engage with our international audience, which goes beyond than what they could imagine.

It’s important to let our local audience know as much as we need to inform our international audience. Through all the stories collected in this book, we hope to show that Rti is a very important public broadcaster in Taiwan. We hope that they can be inspired by what we have been doing for so many years, especially in terms of engaging with our national and international audience and partners.

We need to inform our audience and the public in Taiwan that every penny going to Rti is well spent.

CP: What kind of resources or archives did you did you use to highlight the stories in this book? How were you able to put up together the audiences’ stories?

CH: We went through our own archives, where we have different photographs of different times at Rti. All these stories come from our programme hosts. Some of them are retired, but we try to bring them back.. Some would tell the stories of like the Tiananmen Square, not because they were there, but you know, how they reported the story and how they engaged with a lot of people who fled at that time.

And so these are the Chinese descendants, and they were living abroad and some of them are in Taiwan. So for our Mandarin language listeners, we try to bring back all these reporters who have retired as well. Some are still working, which is why it’s very important to have this book printed because it tells the stories of our reporters, our programme hosts, and our engagement with our listeners and with our partners around the world.

CP: Is there one story in the book that really stood out for you?

CH: For me personally I think the story I would tell took place in 2016 when we wanted to hold a listeners meeting in Bangladesh, because Bangladesh has a huge number of shortwave listeners, especially in the city of Rajsashi, which is called Shortwave Town. And so we planned to go from Dhaka to Rajsashi to meet our listeners.

“I guess the challenges that we face today are pretty much the same as the rest of the world, which is why a lot of people say that shortwave broadcasting is going to disappear in the future. But we do not believe that.” – Carlson Chia-Shan Huang, Manager of Rti’s International Language division. 

They said that about 500 people would come, so we organized that in advance. But then, we received a notice from our de facto embassy in Dhaka, telling us not to come because they received pressure from the local government. This pressure came from the Chinese side, telling us that if the event was to take place, we would be arrested.

But our chairperson at the time said that we would still go to Rajsashi, we would cancel the main meeting but we would instead [meet] around less than 10 key listeners, people who were involved in the management. So we met with them, and like this we escaped imprisonment.

CP: The book touches upon the challenges that Rti is currently facing and explains them to the audience, what are those challenges?

CH: I guess the challenges that we face today are pretty much the same as the rest of the world, which is why a lot of people say that shortwave broadcasting is going to disappear in the future.

But we do not believe that. Recently, we had a meeting with our listeners in Japan and we found out that there are a couple of young people listening to Rti. Of course, shortwave is not as important as it was in the past, but I don’t believe it is bound to disappear. We can see the transformation of the media today, especially in international broadcasting. We have all transformed into a more multimedia platform, including online broadcasting. And more importantly today, everyone is talking about podcasting, which is one of the things that we do as well. To reach out to the younger audience, we are quite active on social media, where our content redirects them to our programmes.