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Published on February 9, 2008

But eventually, out of total frustration with the former government's mishandling of its affairs, I've decided to do it again.

The TPBS was born on January 15, a day after the signal from TITV was abruptly cut forever. At first there were plans to start broadcasting programmes made in-house on February 1, but that deadline has now been put back to February 15. TPBS' board insists that the new schedule will be adhered to and that the fresh shows will make up more than half of the programming earmarked for the public channel.

Hopefully, they achieve that.

But given the series of failures in handling the TV station, I don't have much faith.

Those in charge must have known about the switch-off of the broadcasting signal well in advance. So why weren't new local programmes produced at the time?

The result of the oversight has been a diet of documentaries and not much else since TITV went off air. And the bigwigs at TPBS seem to think they've prepared pretty well, pointing to the fact that all the documentaries were bought in advance.

At time of writing, I'm watching a documentary on the birth of South Korean capital Seoul. For the past few days there's been nothing much but crocodiles swimming across my screen, interrupted the other day by a couple of bouncing kangaroos. And squeezed in between was a show about the Chinese epic that Thais know as "Sam Kok", or the "Three Kingdoms".

The only local programme that I've seen involved street interviews asking people what they wanted to see on TPBS.

One interviewee said there should be more children's shows, another wanted a lot more than she had seen so far: "It's ridiculous to watch crocodiles all day and night."

A labour activist asked for some airtime to be given over to programmes dedicated to workers.

Here in the office, a colleague wanted the channel to air more programmes to educate Thai kids in music.

And these of course are only a small sample of the opinions that have been offered by different people as to what should be shown on the new channel.

But while I have no idea what the final programming block of our public station will look like, I do know that as a Thai citizen I have been deprived of my favourite news show. At first I thought a two-week gap in my viewing pleasure wasn't too much to suffer, but now that it's been delayed for a month - and possibly longer - I'm getting worried.

Perhaps the setbacks are down to the empty spaces left by the TITV staff who challenged the change and as a result were denied the new jobs. After all, these were the key people who kept TITV news programmes exciting and colourful.

Whatever the future holds, hopefully there won't be too many more hiccups at TPBS.

Comments can be sent to e_nang30@yahoo.com.

by e-nang

The NAtion