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China Post editorial:

Enjoy the final soccer game and enjoy reading about it too

When this paper went to print last night, the outcome of the soccer World Cup Final between The Netherlands and Spain in Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium was still not known. And given the contrasting styles of the two teams, predicting the result would be courageous for anyone with a brain larger than that of an octopus.

One thing that can be said with a fair measure of confidence, however, is that record numbers of television viewers in both countries — and in many non-partisan nations around the world — will have watched the game. In Taiwan, where the final kicked off at 2:30 a.m., this will have led to some bleary eyes at work this morning, or perhaps even higher-than-average rates of sick leave as soccer fans nurse their hangovers.

Holland's semifinal game against Uruguay already set television history in the low-lying country best known in Taiwan for its clogs, windmills, tulips and Heineken Beer. Around 12.3 million viewers, slightly more than three-quarters of the total Dutch population of 16.8 million people, are said to have tuned in. Indeed, the all-time 10 most viewed television programs in Holland all featured the national soccer team, so it is safe to say last night's game will have set yet another record.

While this is understandable, it is also slightly sad. Television is a great invention that, at least until emergence of the Internet, provided a unique blend of information, education, entertainment and leisure content.

Over the last decade, a wide range of news and current affairs could have stimulated mass interest from Dutch television viewers. These might have included social issues such as the 2001 world's first same-sex marriage, glamour-by-proxy issues such as the 2002 marriage of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander to Argentine Maxima Zorreguieta, international issues such as the 2003 establishment of the International Criminal Court in the Dutch capital of The Hague, domestic political issues such as the 2004 killing of director Theo van Gogh on an Amsterdam street after his making of a film critical of Muslims, or even odd items such as the televised 2005 world record of a 4,002,146-domino chain, though this event was upstaged by a sparrow which entered the studio and knocked down 23,000 dominos before being shot.

Probably Holland's biggest contribution to television history, however, was creation of the Big Brother reality TV show. This went on to be a big hit in more than 70 countries worldwide and made its original producer, John de Mol, into one of the 500 richest people in the world.

Taiwanese television watchers are among a minority that resisted the Big Brother bug. Indeed, the whole genre of reality TV, which is rapidly dumbing down programming in many Western nations, is largely eschewed here.

We should not be too complacent, however, for Taiwan's scheduling is mainly filled with its own many genres of lowest-common-denominator shows, and informational and educational content is becoming increasingly lowbrow.

This evidently gives people what they want, however, as audience figures are rising, as is the proportion of leisure time spent watching television. One recent survey found that Taiwanese watch an average of 17 hours of television each week. In addition they surf the Internet for another 7 hours 30 minutes, and spend just 2 hours 40 minutes per week reading.

The figures for young people were even more marked, with those aged between 18 and 24 spending around 19 hours 30 minutes watching television, 17 hours surfing, and 3 hours 30 minutes reading. That is more than 5 hours per day looking at a screen compared to about 30 minutes looking at printed words.

Perhaps this is not a cause for concern and merely evidences a historical shift in the sources from which people obtain their information and enjoy their leisure time. But perhaps we should be concerned. Research indicates that watching television tends to be a passive activity, while reading is more active. The latter thus stimulates imagination rather than providing visual gratification, and enables the readers to maintain, rather than surrender, their objectivity and critical judgment (hence advertisers' preference for TV slots). Reading requires more focus, but rewards by paying greater attention to detail and enriching readers' vocabularies.

Nevertheless, there is one area in which reading will never compete with television, and that is in the coverage of live sporting events. However good The China Post's coverage of the Holland-Spain game is, reading it on Tuesday morning will pale hugely compared to cheering one side or the other in a local bar or in one's living room in the small hours of last night.

So if you watched, we hope you enjoyed the final match, will enjoy reading our analysis of the game tomorrow, and will think about picking up a novel or other book for more than 3 hours 30 minutes over the coming week.