If you want to be ignored

Cheer or complain all you want about the prime-time soap operas on Channel 5.

Exact & Scenario - the firm that makes them - isn't listening.

Nipon Pewnen, who's in charge of production, says management never really pays attention to either praise or criticism. "We read people's comments online but we don't take them seriously because they don't reflect a series' popularity like the ratings do," he tells Who? magazine.

And anyway, Nipon adds, most of the shows' fans don't use the Internet - the majority is offline.

He does some grumbling of his own, meanwhile. It's tough to please the audience these days, he says. If the actors are Exact & Scenario regulars, people say they're "the same old troupe", but when newcomers are introduced, they complain about the amateurish acting.

"People tend to forget that everyone has to make a first step. All the superstars had that very first step."

As for demands for a sequel to hits like "Songkram nang-fa" ("Battle of angels"), Nipon says he can't just pull one out of thin air, no matter how lucrative it would be.

"The sponsors want it and so does the audience, but every time we've sat down to try, we've found it impossible. How can we add to something without destroying what was so good about it?"

Full marks for honesty, bonus points for integrity.

Back to school

Showbiz takes its annual pause this evening as Chulalongkorn university's Communication Arts Faculty - good old Nitade Chula - has another reunion bash.

Not that any other shows could proceed when so many actors, news-media personalities, filmmakers, musicians, graphic designers and photographers happen to be Nitade alumni.

Postponed because of the flooding, the reunion retains the planned name, "Six Seed", a pun at the expense of the GTH hit movie "SuckSeed". But GTH and every other studio will be well represented, with many folks keen to try and break the record for leaving latest, set last year "sometime after 2am" by actor-sceenwriter Chantawit "Ter" Dhanasevee, currently starring in "ATM Er Rak Err", another GTH hit.