The government shutting down CTI TV Channel 52 is a topic rarely seen in any democracy in the world. I started paying attention to the changes in their live-stream data on YouTube quite early. Well, back when a magazine leaked the Presidential Office’s script, I already believed they would definitely be forced off cable TV.

CTI TV online live-stream channel: “CTI TV 中天新聞”

First, congratulations here to CTI TV on moving (wandering) to new online media. The first-stage goal of 2 million subscribers was reached within just a few days, at 8:18 AM on December 13, 109th year of the Republic (2020).

CTI TV YouTube Subscriber Count: 2 Million

Below I will list some of the data I recorded earlier, to provide statistical material for anyone who wants to do research in the future.

November 18: 1.35 million subscribers. (18:40: 12,201 online viewers, 220,000 likes, 59,000 dislikes).

November 19: 1.38 million subscribers, 13,000 online viewers at 9:30 PM; the CTI TV YouTube channel gained 30,000 subscribers that day, and kept climbing afterward.

November 20: 1.41 million subscribers.

November 22: 1.44 million subscribers.

That day I did an extra search, noting down the cable TV subscriber count and MOD subscriber count for later comparison next quarter:

  • Cable TV subscribers: Q4 of 108th year (2019): 4.975 million
  • June of 109th year (2020): 4.914 million

Multimedia On Demand (MOD) subscribers:

  • Q4 of 108th year (2019): 2,081,891
  • Q1 of 109th year (2020): 2,086,509

From the cable TV subscriber data above, if CTI TV wants to carve out its own world in the online world, pushing subscribers past 4.5 million would be a good start. If they produce “complete” Chinese, English, and Japanese subtitles, I believe breaking 6 million would not be too big a problem.

Next, below is the data change over the two days the government shut them down.

December 10: 1.73 million subscribers.

December 11

  • 23:03: 1.83 million subscribers
  • 23:26: 1.84 million subscribers, 67,000 simultaneous online viewers (not including cable TV).
  • 23:55: 1.85 million subscribers, 90,000 simultaneous online viewers (not including cable TV).
  • 23:59: 1.85 million subscribers, 93,000 simultaneous online viewers (not including cable TV); in the last 20 seconds it jumped all the way to 97,000.

December 12

  • 00:00: Online viewers just hit exactly 100,000! (This number is really beautiful; I am a round-number obsessive.)
  • 00:15: 1.86 million subscribers.
  • 03:15: 1.87 million subscribers.
  • 10:25: 1.89 million subscribers.
  • 10:50: 1.90 million subscribers.
  • 18:25: 1.94 million subscribers.
  • 18:55: 45,000 online viewers; in the same period TVBS Channel 55 had 11,000 online viewers (1.46 million subscribers), and TVBS Channel 56 had 303 online viewers.

December 13

  • 7:53: 1.99 million subscribers.
  • 8:18: 2 million subscribers.

December 14

  • 8:10: 2.1 million subscribers.
  • 17:45: 2.13 million subscribers.
  • 19:00: 2.14 million subscribers, 68,000 online viewers (460,000 likes, 67,000 dislikes).
  • 21:10: “Normal Performance” (co-hosted by Wang You-cheng and Lo Chih-chiang) had 100,000 online viewers.

December 16: 2.2 million subscribers.

December 18, 19:00: 2.25 million subscribers.

December 26: 2.3 million subscribers.

References
  1. Cutting off cable TV: Canceling the lease and switching to MOD 🎉
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