TPBS baulks at taking on TITV's journalists

Thai Public Broad-casting Service (TPBS) yesterday agreed to recruit most of its production staff from TITV, which went off the air last Tuesday. However, it remained undecided whether TPBS would hire the TITV news crew, which numbers about 300 staff.

TPBS, the country's first public television station, is to take over the assets and frequency of TITV. The new station is scheduled to begin broadcasting its own programmes from February 1.

The station's daily broadcast schedule will run from 6 pm to midnight, with news programmes, children's programmes, community-service programmes, interviews, foreign-news programmes, and analysis. 

Kwansuang Atibodhi, who chairs the TPBS temporary policy board, yesterday announced the board's decision to recruit 80 per cent of TITV staff who had worked on the former station's programmes and production.

"Later, university lecturers and other companies will help transparently recruit applicants for other positions," he said.

Explaining why TPBS might not recruit the news crew from TITV, Kwansuang said: "The TPBS news structure is different from TITV. We have to see how to adjust to the new format before making the decision on the news crew."

According to a source, TPBS acting director Thepchai Yong will meet with the TITV news crew at 10.30am today.

"I can't understand the differences in the news structure. To me, when we cover news, we report it to our audience. What are the differences?" a reporter for TITV said at the headquarters of the now-defunct station.

She said she had yet to look for a job elsewhere. "I will wait and see whether TPBS accepts my application," she said.

Jom Petchpradub, former deputy executive news editor of TITV, said most members of the TITV news crew had applied for work at TPBS.

"They want to know whether they will get the jobs or not so they can plan their future," he said.

TPBS will use the headquarters of TITV because the lease for the space at the Shinawatra 3 Building was also transferred to TPBS. The lease will expire at the end of this year.

When asked about requests for TPBS to accept the news crew from TITV, Thepchai said TPBS would transparently recruit news people.

"If we have the same attitudes, we can work together," he said.

Thepchai added that the TPBS temporary policy board would appoint an external team to audit the assets of TITV to determine whether TITV had completely transferred its assets to TPBS.

Commenting on TITV employees' demand that TPBS must at least become the third most-watched TV station, as TITV was, Thepchai said that award-winning movies were not always the most watched.

"It's true that if we operate a TV station we must have an audience. Our programmes should not be so academic that they become boring. The important point is that we produce useful programmes," he said.

In a related development, Piyakul Laowansiri of Thammasat University said at a seminar that children's TV programmes could be in the form of short films, cartoons, music programmes, documentaries or news programmes as long as the content was appropriate for children.

"It's about the content, not the form," she said. She also supported the idea of allocating some airtime to work produced by students.

The Nation