Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said today that he has set up a special government committee to investigate the practice of state TV and radio stations allowing middlemen to take fees from programme producers for getting their material on the air. Thaksin said he wanted the producers to receive payment from the state TV and radio stations directly instead of negotiating through middlemen.
The Prime Minister said it was not fair that the middlemen obtained the concessions only to further sell them to programme producers. “I’ve received a lot complaints so I’ll have a committee investigate against this kind of practice,” Thaksin said. The panel is chaired by a deputy permanent secretary from the PM’s Office, and has representatives from the Royal Thai Police and Office of the Attorney General as well as academics.
(Source: The Nation)
on Dec 31st, 2005 at 13:07
While we’re in Thailand, Thai Channel 11 (owned, amazingly, by the government’s Public Relations Department) is going to start airing 10 hours a day of tourist-related programming in January (according to Glenn Hauser’s DX Listening Digest).
The last ratings I saw for Ch11 were a 2% share. Thai TV is dominated by entertainment-oriented Channels 3 and 7. Always interesting that they name their (at least partly) nationwide networks after the VHF channels they occupy in Bangkok!