Scenario 1: If iTV has to return its broadcasting licence to the PM's Office because it cannot bear the financial cost, it might turn itself into a news agency. This idea is indeed being discussed among iTV executives.

In this role, iTV staff could produce broadcast news for the various TV channels and iTV would limit itself to the role of a broadcast producer only, without a station of its own.

"This is one option we have in the worst-case scenario that we lose the concession," said one source. "Under the new structure, this news team would produce news for all TV channels."

However, iTV would still fight to the end by planning to ask the PM's Office to jointly set up an arbitration panel to settle the eventual amount of fines that iTV has to pay to the PM's Office for breach of the broadcast contract.  iTV has insisted that the fine should amount to Bt270,000 per day during the past 759 days since 2004. The PM's Office said the figure should be Bt100 million per day.

Scenario 2: The government reclaims iTV as state property - if iTV were to shoulder the penalty of Bt94 billion - and run it as another TV station.

Then iTV would have to be delisted from the stock market.

Kongkiat Opaswongkarn, CEO of Asia Plus Plc, said under this scenario the government would need to tender for all the iTV shares from the shareholders. The cost of the tender should not be high as the stock price has plummeted sharply.

But to keep iTV up and running again, the government would need to inject money into the station as it has done with Channel 11, he added.

Scenario 3: The PM's Office may put out a new bid for iTV. But this time, it has to make sure that the concession is on par with other operators getting concessions from other TV stations. Then the content ratio may have to be adjusted.

The old concession is unrealistic and too burdensome for iTV, which can't make a profit.

Scenario 4: The PM's Office could have a chance to truly turn iTV into an independent TV station by devoting its news coverage to inform and enlighten the Thai public. As suggested by Suraphol Srivittaya of Rangsit University, the PM's Office may establish iTV as a national public broadcasting corporation. Money gained from the fines from the old iTV, as well as iTV bond issue, could be used and raised as seed capital.

Surapol suggested the board and senior executives of iTV be sacked, while the staff of more than 1,000 be retained and shifted to the new public broadcasting corporation.

Scenario 5: iTV becomes Thailand's version of the BBC, as Air Chief Marshal Chalit Pukbhasuk has hoped it to be.

In Britain, the BBC provides a wide range of distinctive programmes and services for everyone, free of commercial interests and political bias. They include television, radio, national, local, children's, educational, language and other services for key interest groups.

BBC services are hugely popular and used by over 90 per cent of the UK population every week.

The BBC is financed by a TV licence paid by households. It does not have to serve the interests of advertisers or produce a return for shareholders.

All in all, iTV will have to fit into one of the models in the Frequency Reallocation Law. Under this law, in which 40 per cent of TV stations may function for the state sector (like C-Span in the US), 40 per cent are for the commercial sector and 20 per cent for the civic sector.

But in the state sector, there is also an argument going on that some TV stations, albeit operating as a state tool, may function for the benefit of the public, like the BBC in the UK.