Congress Candidate Huang Wei-feng of Changhwa County filed a complaint against cable TV operators in Changhwa County for allegedly acting in concert in connection with election campaign commercials
Chinese Taipei
Case:
Congress Candidate Huang Wei-feng of Changhwa County filed a complaint against cable TV operators in Changhwa County for allegedly acting in concert in connection with election campaign commercials
Key Word:
to act in concert
Reference:
Fair Trade Commission Decision of April 21, 1999 (the 389th Commission Meeting); Letter (88) Kung Yi Tzu No. 8713710-005
Industry:
Television Industry (8520)
Relevant Law:
Article 14 of the Fair Trade Law
Summary:
The Fair Trade Law (the Law) regulates acts pertaining to trade within markets; activities pertaining to election are “political acts” and are not regulated by the Law. The dispute between the complainant and the accused party over commercial broadcasts related to market trade transactions, and was not directly related with political acts associated with the election. The Law was thus applicable and according the Fair Trade Commission (this Commission) conducted an investigation into this case.
The accused parties, NCC CATV (hereinafter “NCC”) and SDTV, operated in the Changhwa and Peitou districts in Changhwa County as delimited by the Government Information Office under the Cabinet. They belonged to different geographic markets and were not competitors. However, since the election campaign commercials of the legislator candidates were targeted to all residents of Changhwa County, the advertisement budget of the candidates was collected by all the cable TV operators of the entire county. Thus in relation to the intended market of the commercials, NCC and SDTV were in fact businesses in competition with each other.
Investigation showed that prior to the election period in April and May 1998, both NCC and SDTV commissioned Chang You Multi-media Corp. (hereinafter “Chang You”) to handle all issues relating to the airing of commercials. Chang You determined the fees for the airing of election campaign commercials and paid monthly commissioning fees to both SDTV and NCC. Although NCC could accept commercials on its own, NCC still had to abide by the fees set by Chang You. Since the fees for airing the commercials were not jointly determined by NCC and SDTV, and there was no evidence indicating that NCC and SDTV used Chang You to jointly set the fees through contracts, agreements, or other forms of mutual understanding, their act could not be determined to violate the provisions of Article 14 of the Law prohibiting enterprises from acting in concert.
However, in respect of the commercials aired by both NCC and SDTV during the election campaign period, a change in the market situation resulted from the allocation of electoral districts, and the accused parties became market competitors. Although there was no concerted act, the act by the accused parties of commissioning the same company to handle all matters relating to the airing of commercials during the period in question would, objectively speaking, in fact restrict competition; the act was thus inappropriate. This Commission therefore urged that NCC, SDTV, and Chang You, when signing their respective contracts, avoid allowing changes in the market situation during specific periods of time to cause restraints on competition.
Appendix:
NCC CATV’s Uniform Invoice Number: 84566521
SDTV’s Uniform Invoice Number: 84594033
Chang You Multimedia Co., Ltd.’s Uniform Invoice Number: 16397196
Summarized by Ch’en, Chun-t’ing
Supervised by Hsin, Chih-chung