2016 ANNUAL REVIEW Ministry of Science and Technology

Ministry of Science and Technology 23 is continuing to foster industry-academic collaboration between the media industry and domestic scientists. This program provided funding to domestic scientists involved in industry-academic collaborative projects producing, publishing, and broadcasting popular science content. Apart from popular science TV program series, an Internet section has been added to this program in light of the growing use of online media. In 2016, funding was provided for the production of 49 popular science video programs (1,884 minutes) in three groups, 206 science news items, and 130 minutes of popular science snap movies. Funding was provided for ten projects (including one extension project), in which four public universities and organizations, including National Taiwan Museum and National Taiwan University, and four private universities, including Kaohsiung Medical University, variously signed industry-academic collaboration contracts with the television companies CTS and FTV Culture, and eight other popular science corporate partners. These collaborative efforts are expected to result in the production of seven popular science films, one popular science animated short feature, and one micro-film. In the area of extension, the "Science Discovery" popular science show continued to be broadcast every Saturday morning on FTV News in order to get the public in the habit of viewing, and 55 hours of programming (including a New Year's holiday special) was broadcast over the course of 2016. The program's highest viewing rate exceeded 0.79% (and averaged 0.31%), and it had an average hourly reach of roughly 415,000 person-times. This show's viewing rate is typically higher than that of the National Geographic Channel, Discovery channel, Animal Planet channel, and other knowledge/information programs during the same time period. The show's viewers tend to consist of middle-aged individuals with relatively high incomes, which reveals that the show is influential with an elite audience. With regard to output quality, popular science programs produced with funding from MOST have been finalists in the Golden Bell Awards for nine consecutive years, and have won awards for six consecutive years. These programs won three awards in 2016: "Buzz Go Go Go," which involves the use of scientific experiments to prove or disprove online rumors, won the Best Science Program Award, "Go Go Giwas," which highlights the everyday wisdom of Taiwan's indigenous peoples, won the Best Animated Program Award, and "From Proverbs to Science," which looked at the scientific content of traditional proverbs, won the Best Children and Young Adult Program Host Award. Over the years, popular science content produced with funding from MOST has accumulated a total of 15 Golden Bell Awards, which indicates the high level of quality that has been achieved. Furthermore, the popular science animated program "Go Go Giwas" also was also a finalist at Korea's Bucheon International Animation Festival and the Chicago International Children's Film Festival. Apart from production and promotion of popular science content, in the area of research and manpower cultivation, MOST conducted various seminars and workshops during 2016, issued 19 papers concerning scientific communications, supported faculty teaching scientific communications- related general education courses at universities in northern, central, and southern Taiwan, and held popular science news writing workshops; these undertakings provided training to more than 1,200 persons. Promoting National S&T Development