GMM to seek court stay on licence fee instalment
GMM GRAMMY, the country’s largest music and entertainment giant with two digital terrestrial TV stations, will soon ask the Central Administrative Court for a temporary injunction on payment of the third instalment of the upfront licence fee after the bro
Chairman Paiboon Damrongchaitham said last week that he had been conferring with his legal team about taking legal action against the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) because the NBTC had failed to deliver on its promises to transition the country from analog to digital TV.
Key activities to create a terrestrial-based digital TV broadcasting system as the national broadcasting backbone were also not successful yet, he said.
For instance, penetration of digital TV among viewers remains low due to inefficiency of the digital TV coupon scheme.
A standard digital TV channel numbering system still cannot be applied across all media platforms following the NBTC’s weak law enforcement, he said.
Even though early this year the NBTC established a panel assigned to solve problems for troubled digital-TV operators, it could not agree to the requests from a group of digital TV broadcasters after two months of brainstorming.
Among the key requests, the financially strapped digital-TV players want the regulator to support them by delaying the third instalment of the upfront licence fee.
However, the NBTC argued that it could not comply because of legal restraints.
Under Section 42 of the Organisation to Assign Radio Frequencies and to Regulate Broadcasting and Telecommunications Services Act of 2010, all licence holders must pay the licence fee yearly at an appropriate rate for the type of licence in accordance with the Broadcasting Act.
“Once the regulator broke it promises, my company, which now runs the One 31 and GMM 25 digital TV channels, wants to be protected and treated fairly by petitioning to the court for a temporary injunction to delay the third instalment of the upfront licence fee, whose deadline is May 24,” Paiboon said.
One 31 and GMM 25 are among the seven major digital TV stations that last year sued the NBTC for damages at the Central Administrative Court, allegedly caused by the regulator’s negligence in guiding the transition from analog to digital TV.
The other five stations were PPTV, Thairath TV, Bright TV, Now 26 and Nation TV.
