This study aims to investigate the plausible relationship betweendramatized issues on television news, motivation of television viewing, and their effects on issue perception of television viewers by combining agendasetting and the motivation of TV news use as a theoretical framework. A quantitative content analysis of the prime time television news and a nationalsurvey were used to obtain public’s most important problems facing Taiwan, their television viewing patterns as well as the motivation of watchingtelevision news. The results indicated that, overall, there was no significant correlation between the television’s agenda and viewers’ agenda. However,conflict frames of issues on TV enhanced their importance among public agenda. Attention to TV news positively predicted issue divergence. The result also indicated thatpeople with information seeking motivation bear more issues than people with motivation of escape and entertainmentseeking. Based on the results, dramatized TV news does not necessarily helpviewers on issue cognition.