MEDIA MARKET DATA - World Association of Newspapers

party's policy-making Central Standing Committee passed a resolution recently to stopprinting the paper at the end of May. It will settle accounts and deal out severance paymentsfor its more than 70 editorial staff at the same time. The CDN was founded in February 1928in Shanghai and relocated to Taiwan in 1949. During the 1928-1949 period, it was regardedas the official mouthpiece of the KMT-run government of the Republic of China. KMTChairman Ma Ying-jeou has expressed deep sorrow over the decision to suspend publishingof the historic paper. But he said the decision was a pragmatic one. As a stop-gap measure, asmall team of the CDN staff will try to maintain the electronic edition of the daily until a newbuyer or investor is found to inject new capital to revive the print edition, according to asource close to the CDN.http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/detail.asp?ID=83160&GRP=B; May 30, 2006Broadcasting CompaniesFranceFrance's television dream of mounting a challenge to CNN and the BBC has suffered anembarrassing setback after claims that the new channel would broadcast most of its output inEnglish. Starved of realistic funding for a 24-hour news station, CII is due to be launched inDecember for transmission initially to Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Its annual budget,met by the French taxpayer, will be £50 million, about an eighth of CNN's. President JacquesChirac promised a "CNN à la française" in the 2002 election campaign and is committed to astation that will "spread the values of France and its global vision throughout the world". Itwas always known that part of the channel's output would be in English and Arabic butchampions of the French language were appalled at suggestions that its output in the languagebe less than four hours a day. The satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé quoted Jean-PierrePaoli, right-hand man to CII's head, Alain de Pouzihac, as saying: "It could be half in English,half in French or a different proportion." But it added that CII executives told counterparts atthe state-owned France Televisions, a partner with the private TF1 network in the venture,that French language transmissions would be limited to three hours each morning. The rest,Le Canard Enchainé said, would be "in the language of Shakespeare". Mr Paoli was reportedto have defended the proposal on the grounds that English was a universal language, adding:"We are hardly committing an act of high treason." Marc Favre d'Echallens, of theAssociation for the Defence of the French Language (DLF), expressed outrage that a stationdesigned to give a "French vision" of world affairs would contain so little in French. "Aftercelebrating Trafalgar with the English and making light of our own great victory of Austerlitz,it probably follows that a publicly-funded French television channel should end upbroadcasting in English," he said. "If all we get is a poor man's version of what is alreadyavailable, what is the point of doing it at all?" A spokesman for the new channel said: "Eightyper cent of our target audience will be anglophone. If we want pluralism in the field ofinternational television news, we cannot ignore this. Our viewers will be opinion formers,journalists and people who travel a lot, and the language most common to them is English."http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=B0V01YUXE2SUNQFIQMGSFGGAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2006/03/16/wcnn16.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/16/ixworld.htmlPoland-BelarusAn EU-funded radio broadcaster began beaming news, music and information into Belarus onFebruary 26 to counter state-controlled media three weeks before a tense presidential election."We are putting out truthful and current information about events in Belarus and abroad. Weare for freedom and objectivity," said a written statement on the European Radio for Belaruswebsite. The Vilnius-based Baltic Waves service broadcasts on short wave from the nearby19