Fee waiver for 5 years sought to encourage Ch 3 simulcast

Thawatchai Jittrapanun, a member of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), will propose to the broadcast committee on Monday five-year licence-fee waivers as an incentive to resolve the battle to get analog Channel 3 simulcast on a digital channel.

He wants the annual licence fee for BEC-Multimedia’s digital Channel 33 and the licence fee to operate the concession of Bangkok Entertainment Co, operator of Channel 3, waived for five years to encourage BEC to simulcast Channel 3 content on Channel 33, which uses the digital format. 

However, a broadcasting-industry source said the company was likely to reject this idea.

The fees in question cost BEC-Multimedia and BEC 2 per cent of their annual revenue. BEC also pays a concession fee to MCOT as well as an NBTC licence fee to operate that concession. BEC-Multimedia holds three digital-TV licences granted by the NBTC. 

A similar fee waiver would also be applied to Channel 7 operator Bangkok Broadcasting and Television’s Channel 35, and to BBTV itself, Thawatchai added. He will also propose that the annual licence fees of the other 22 digital channels be waived for five years out of fairness, so Channels 33 and 35 are not the only beneficiaries. 

Thawatchai said that if the committee endorsed his proposal, it could use it as a framework to talk with BEC to encourage it to simulcast Channel 3’s analog content on Channel 33. 

However, an industry source said BEC was unlikely to go along with this proposal.

He explained that although Channel 7 content is simulcast on Channel 35, both channels aired the same content. Therefore, Channel 35 has no revenue of its own, as its income goes to Channel 7, which originates the programming. Since it has no revenue, Channel 35 does not pay the annual licence fee. 

Therefore, if Channel 3 goes this same route, Channel 33 will have no revenue, which means it will not have to pay a licence fee to the NBTC. Therefore, Channel 3 would gain nothing from the proposed fee waiver. As for the proposed waiver of the concession licence fee, the source noted that BEC had already asked the broadcasting committee to consider such a waiver, so this issue should not be raised as an incentive for the desired simulcast.

While BEC would gain nothing from Thawatchai’s proposal, other digital channels would enjoy a licence-fee reduction, the source added.

The broadcasting committee of the NBTC has tried many means to encourage BEC to adopt the simulcast option in order to push it to enter the digital TV era fully. The company is the only holder of a state broadcasting concession still declining to simulcast content.

The first talks between committee members and BEC were held on Tuesday. No more talks will be held until the committee discusses the issue at its next meeting on Monday.