In Taiwan it is instilled at a young age that there is no such thing as play time, and that in your free time you must be doing something that improves you.
This explains why there are so many English Schools for adults. Every foreigner in Taiwan should be thankful for this. It also explains why two of the most famous tv shows here are the news and talk shows. There is an extremely large number of tv news channels packed to the brim with trackers all over the screen constantly scrolling information. While talk shows are made under the veil of teaching something about a topic. Here the shows are about topics, rather than celebrity guests.
All these things have come together to make the apprentice a huge hit over here. The rhetoric is "I watch it so I can learn more about business." I shudder to think if people are actually learning something about business from this show (yes i have been forced to watch a large number of episodes). Then again this could explain some of the more "unique" approaches to business I have noticed in Taiwan.
Of special note, this picture also illustrates one of Taiwan's other hobbies...selling bootleg box sets of tv shows.
