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Published on November 3, 2007

The much-criticised National Legislative Assembly left one noble legacy this past week. But the overwhelming vote that passed the Public Television Bill was just the first step of a journey into uncharted territory. Thailand's first "public service broadcasting station" will take time to build. To be more precise, it will take time to establish itself in a broadcast media industry that has long been subject to the whims of politics and commercialism.

Will Thailand really be able to boast a TV station that doesn't rely on "political subsidy" or advertising revenues? The bill's passage doesn't provide the answer. Instead, it only amplifies the question, which had been limited to discussions among a few academics and advocates. The powers that be and the interim legislature have done a large part of their job, and the success or failure of this ambition will now depend largely on how strong our society's will is.

The heart of the law is something new. Thailand will have to experiment with so-called "audience councils" that will supervise and control programme quality. This system will replace the "market law", in which ratings determine everything, including a station's survival. As far as this new station is concerned, no minister or senior government official will be able to change, control or ban content via a phone call. No advertiser can pull strings on programming time and content. As for those content providers, there will be no more clashes of ethics and commercialism. Creativity can be unleashed for all good causes.

The new station will be funded by special taxes intended to protect the freedom, objectivity and neutrality of content providers. It won't be controlled by station owners as we know them; it will be supervised by independent juries who will not be motivated by profit or conflicts of interest. And its staff will work in an enviable environment, where they don't need to worry every time there is a military reshuffle or change in the government.

The new law ends a bittersweet chapter in Thailand's quest for a truly independent TV station. Following the bloody political uprising in 1992, iTV was born in response to the clamour for a TV channel that wouldn't be used as a tool of the powers that be. Its considerable "independence" was hailed by the public but was unfortunately short-lived. Before he came to power in 2001, Thaksin Shinawatra took over the financially weak station, making it politically biased when it came to reporting about him, his party and then his government when he became prime minister. Under the Thaksin administration, ITV's management arbitrarily changed the concession terms of the station to lessen its financial burden and to increase the amount of entertainment content it could air.

But the worst was still to come. ITV was sold last year to Singapore's Temasek as part of the highly controversial Shin Corp takeover. Legal trouble in the wake of the September 19 coup led to the station being nationalised, sparking fresh controversy. The station was reincarnated briefly in the form of TITV before last week's passage of the new law.

A new adventure lies ahead. It begins with the next step: the setting up of a "policy committee" to lay down a firm foundation for the new station. Creating true understanding about the station's principles and how it should operate, meanwhile, will not be easy. For example, a lot of people still cannot differentiate between the new station and the present Channel 11 under the Public Relations Department, or how a tax subsidy will differ from direct funding by the state. Some news headlines have highlighted the possible "desertion" of advertisers from the new channel, and certain critics have asked why commercialism cannot produce quality TV journalism.

After all the highs and lows, the original iTV is poised for another big change, and it's a change that will free its founding principles from the shackles of politics and commercial ratings. For long, both politics and commercialism were considered necessary evils for TV operations, which require a lot of money. How could a TV station survive without income from advertising or a state subsidy - which in turn made it susceptible to political change?

It's now up to the Thai public to answer that question.

The Nation