Published on January 13, 2006

Doctor’s last minute London visit fails to save radio service

Today Dr Yongyud Wongpiromsarn will listen to his favourite radio programme for the last time.

At least for a while.

The staunch fan of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Thai Service is hoping the shutdown of the show will be only temporary.

Yongyud, who heads the “I Love BBC-Thai” group, will not sit idly by as his cherished programme is pulled off the air.

The doctor returned only yesterday from London, where he had appeared before some 100 British MPs during his campaign to petition the United Kingdom’s Parliament to reverse its decision to terminate the Thai-language broadcast.

He achieved more in London than he had expected: The MPs promised to bring the issue to a debate in the House, he said.

The BBC Thai-language radio service has served Thai listeners for more than six decades since its debut in 1941. Last October, however, management of the BBC World Service decided to include its Thai Service among the casualties of a cost-cutting initiative.

Yet members of the House disagree with the government-run BBC’s decision to axe its Thai-language radio programme, Yongyud said.

Several House members told him during his meeting with them that the BBC’s programmes were important mediums to keep British culture and opinion alive in countries like Thailand at a very low cost.

Thai anglophiles and British Thailand-lovers certainly agree on that.

Prof Philip Stott, president of the Association of Anglo-Thai Society, said the BBC Thai Service has served as a bridge between the peoples of the two kingdoms.

Yongyud also stressed to British lawmakers that the BBC Thai Service provided its listeners invaluable access to independent sources of information. “I told the meeting that in Thailand, there’s a political culture that keeps interfering with the media,” he said.

Unencumbered by government restrictions, the BBC Thai-language radio service was an alternative source of news for Thais, agreed Jeremy Dear, secretary-general of the National Union of Journalists in the UK.

“It is not too late for a change of heart,” he said, calling on British lawmakers to intervene.

The Thai service is just one of several being axed, including the native-language services in the Czech Republic, Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Kazakhstan.

Fans of the Thai-language service will gather at Chulalongkorn University’s Book Centre at Siam Square Branch to see off the service’s last programme (to be aired from 5.30pm to 8.15pm) in style.

Even though this will be their last broadcast, staff said they would produce the programme in the routine, professional way.

From the head office in London and its office in Bangkok, BBC staffers will join to recount the highlights of the Thai Service’s 64-year history.

Yongyud and local BBC staffers hope the service will resume soon.

Subhatra Bhumiprabhas

The Nation

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