Chairman Paiboon Damrongchaitham yesterday said the deal would be finalised with potential partners within a month.

"We are the largest local provider of entertainment content and we need as much diversified media or 'contact points' as possible to deliver our content to target viewers," said Paiboon.

Paiboon said the group was not, however, interested in investing in independent TV station iTV, which is suffering financial problems along with an unclear future.

Paiboon's announcement came amid a huge slowdown in the group's traditional media.

The GMM Media unit announced a projection of just 2-per-cent growth due to economic and political uncertainties which have led to a big cut in advertising budget by businesses.

"The overall economic and political situation this year is expected to be worse than the financial crisis in 1997, and our business projection should be conservative," said Paiboon. "While many other companies expect a huge decline in performance by between 10 per cent and 20 per cent, along with the gloomy and uncertain economic and political situation, we will be satisfied if we can maintain business at the same level as last year."

Paiboon said the company was trying to minimise business risks. Between 30 and 40 per cent of time slots in its radio and TV programmes have been sold in advance to sponsors.

Sirichai Tantiponganant, chief financial officer of GMM Grammy, said GMM Media had set a revenue target of Bt2.9 billion. He said 39 per cent of media revenue would come from TV, 23 per cent from radio spots, 24

per cent from the activation business, and 9 per cent from publishing.

"2006 was a difficult year for GMM Media, as we faced flat growth in our TV-programme business and very slight growth in radio. We however expect our radio and activation business to be the key driver of growth at 7 per cent this year, with about 4 per cent for TV programmes. We expect to maintain our publishing business without any growth projection for this year," he said.

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn

The Nation