The analysis of game competition: cable television news channel

Abstract

Theoretically, competition increases the total social welfare; and more competitors in the supply side should be able to promote more efficiency and welfare. Among the multi-channel television industry in Taiwan, there are over hundreds of channels and eight 24-hours news channels. However, the reality indicated that more competitions between numerous news channels elicit worse performance, such as low production cost and less diversity. This paper specifically focuses on the dilemma of the prisoners in the game theory to explain the reasons of the news channels corporation could not select their dominant strategy but the dominated strategy in the Nash equilibrium. It suggests the academics and the government should try to modify the rule of the game, payoff and information set, in order to change the outcome of the dilemma among the cable television news channels.