Taiwan’s most significant video content and production issues in 2025 are (1) likely leadership changes at government agency TAICCA and the impact this will have on industry direction, and (2) how to balance the country’s creative impulses, which tend to art house, with commercial ambitions. There’s also the clearly irresistable lure of “going global” or “being international”, which, as is the case for so many TV producers in Asia, remains pretty much elusive for multiple reasons. At the same time, progress is being made in the co-production/development space. 

Netflix leads in guiding the local production industry into more ambitious stories/productions under the banner of Chinese-language (rather than Taiwanese) originals. Of the five titles on Netflix’s 2025 line-up, four are deeply anchored in Taiwan, with talent including actors Alice Ko and Jasper Liu (I Am Married… But!); Taiwanese singer-actress turned writer/director, Rene Liu (Forget You Not); Shu Qi, Leste Chen and Hsu Chao-jen (The Resurrected); and Chiang Chi-cheng, Chien Chi-feng and Lin Hsin-Huei (Had I Not Seen the Sun), among others. These follow headliners such as Copycat Killer (2022/3) and The Victim’s Game (2020/2024), both from Greener Grass Productions; and Born for the Spotlight (2024, Third Man Entertainment). 

More broadly, Taiwan is part of the renewed vigour in Chinese-language programming and production across the Chinese-speaking world, as witnessed by Mainland Chinese streamers, iQiyi and WeTV, and producers including Linmon Media (which has launched a dedicated micro-drama division), along with Catchplay and DaMou Entertainment from Taipei and Mediacorp from Singapore, which has multiple content initiatives on the go in Taiwan. 

Company heads across the Chinese-speaking region talk about bigger/better dramas targeting broader audiences, and about Taiwan’s resurrection, which started about five years ago after a prolonged post-Idol drama slump. The new lingua franca is all about collaborations, creative funding and different ways of working with partners for the greater commercial good. 

On the channels landscape, while streaming and digital services are taking a toll on traditional free-TV/pay-TV viewership, Taiwan’s cable environment remains one of the region’s most robust, echoing its early days as the darling of Asia’s pay-TV universe.  

Political tensions between Taiwan and mainland China play out in the media landscape in various ways, mostly in the news space and, more recently, around English-language general entertainment international platform, TaiwanPlus. The platform, launched in August 2021 by the Ministry of Culture, faces loud challenges at home from opposition lawmakers jumping up and down about funding and use of public money, and from Mainland China, which predictably opposes this soft-power initiative. 

Whatever direction is set in the second half of 2025, TAICCA is highly likely to remain a driving force, with burgeoning international visibility initiatives; one of the region’s best pitching series held every November during the TCCF event in Taipei; and partnerships with what seems like every domestic platform that has a commissioning budget and needs to keep the powers that be happy. 

Taiwan in numbers
Population.............................. 23.35 million
Households............................. 9.487 million
Avg household size................................ 2.5
Terrestrial TV operators............................. 5
Cable TV/digital subs.............. 4.52 million
Cable TV system operators................... 64
Direct satellite broadcasting TV ops...... 4
Satellite broadcasting TV - Channels 
Program Provider (Domestic).............. 131
Satellite broadcasting TV - Channels 
Program Provider (Foreign)................... 89
Satellite broadcasting TV - Other 
Broadcasters........................................... 86
Revenue of Terrestrial Television 
(Advertising) ……...................... 22.7 billion
OTT TV subscribers …................. 5.8 million
Fixed broadband subscribers... 6.3 million
Mobile phone subscribers..... 29.85 million
Telephone subscribers.................... 52.92% (per 100 inhabitants)
Mobile/telco market shares in 2024:
- Chunghwa Telecom..................... 40.26%
- Far Eastone Telecom.................... 30.08%
- Taiwan Mobile Telecom............... 29.67%
Broadband internet subscribers in 2024:
- FTTx.......................................... 4.25 million
- Cable modem subs.............. 2.27 million
- ADSL subscribers..........................240,000
Source: National Communications Commission (NCC) 2024 Communications Market Report 

Published in The Big List Taiwan | April 2025 edition