A court in Taiwan has rejected attempts by a Beijing-friendly broadcaster to postpone the closure of its news channel and to stop its spectrum from being allocated to others.

The channel would be taken off-air on Friday as scheduled, after the Taipei High Administrative Court on Monday ruled that television station CTiTV had made ungrounded applications in seeking a delayed shutdown and an injunction on the channel’s broadcasting frequency.

In response to the decision, the TV station, owned by pro-China snack tycoon and Want Want China chair Tsai Eng-meng, said that it was angry and disappointed.

It condemned the alleged political interference in an earlier decision, made by the media watchdog National Communications Commission, to end the licensing after six years and vowed to launch another legal battle against the decision.

The seven-member commission on Nov. 18 unanimously vetoed CTiTV’s license renewal application, saying that the station had run afoul of regulations multiple times and failed to live up to professional standards. The station’s owner Tsai was also found to have interfered with editorial independence, the commission said.

CTiTV filed a lawsuit against the watchdog’s decision, while also applying for a court order to stop channel 52, now used by the station, from being assigned to another company.

On Monday, the court ruled that the TV station could not prove it would stand a high chance of winning against the failed licensing bid, which would have been a main condition in granting the injunction.

The court also disagreed with the CTiTV contention, made at a hearing on Nov. 30, that the commission’s decision would lead to a loss of revenue, damage employees’ labor rights and harm freedom of speech.

Rejecting the application would not cause “irrecoverable damage or urgent harm” to the company, which should be well aware that the license had to be renewed every six years as required under Taiwanese law, the court said.

Earlier, the commission’s lawyers also argued that the channel could continue to operate by publishing its content on other platforms, such as YouTube, without affecting the staff’s labor rights.

On the proposed injunction, the court believed that granting such an order would undermine the commission’s role as a media watchdog. It also noted that channel slots were not assigned by the commission but by cable and satellite TV system operators, and hence CTiTV’s reasons for seeking the said injunction could not be established.

Opposition political party Kuomintang condemned the ruling, saying that after CTiTV’s news channel closed, Taiwan’s TV news would be biased and “covered in green,” the colour of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party. CTiTV’s news channel has long been a vocal critic of the DDP.

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