TV Pool publisher has big expectations

Thai TV Pool, a subsidiary of TV Pool magazine, recently won licences for digital channels in the news and children/family categories, bidding a total of more than Bt2 billion in the auction held by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC).

"I wish to become the No 1 digital TV broadcasting company within five years in terms of market share in total TV advertising spending," chairwoman Pantipa Sakulchai, renowned in the Thai entertainment industry as "Big Sister Tim of TV Pool", said yesterday.

The company will run a news channel called THV, while the Loca channel is designed for family audiences. Both TV stations will begin broadcasting in April. The company aims for Bt2 billion in revenue in the first year. Of that, about 60 per cent will come from THV. The stations will offer advertising rates of between Bt50,000 and Bt100,000 per minute.

Pantipa said that for the foreseeable future TV would remain a key medium for Thai audiences as well as advertisers. So with strong content, talented production teams and programming partners such as STG Multimedia, Show No Limit and Pasang Yasorn, the company believes that THV will be among the top TV stations soon.

She made her remarks at the signing ceremony for an exclusive content-provider agreement with Post Publishing. The latter’s subsidiary Post TV will produce general news programmes mainly involving economic, business, political, social, and current affairs exclusively for THV channel under a time- and profit-sharing arrangement. Post TV, which failed to secure an NBTC digital-TV licence last year, will produce up to six hours a day of programming for THV, or about 25 per cent of total airtime.

"THV channel has a number of professional teams to build up its strength in terms of news reporting. We are glad that a famous TV host, Suphap Kleekachai, is staying with us as a director for news production," Pantipa said. To comply with NBTC rules governing digital news channels, Thai TV Pool will produce its own entertainment news programmes for about 25 per cent of total airtime. Meanwhile, another half of its airtime will be dedicated for drama, variety and talk shows.

Suthikiat Chirathivat, executive chairman of Post Publishing, said his company had a clear policy to expand its business into the broadcasting sector by leveraging on its more than 60 years of experience in news and other media industries.

Over the past four years, Post Publishing has entered the broadcasting business by producing news-related programmes and supplying them to free TV outlets like Channel 5 and Channel 11 and satellite TV channels such as TNN 24.

Supakorn Vejjajiva, president and chief operating officer of Post Publishing, said its TV-production unit contributed only 10 per cent of total income. After this agreement with Thai TV Pool, within the next five years, revenue generated by the TV business unit would account for about 40-50 per cent of the group’s revenue, with the rest from publishing.