New measures to help digital-TV operators through hard times

Most of the measures, which were made public yesterday, have already been approved by the NBTC board and will take effect next year, said the watchdog’s secretary-general, Takorn Tantasith.
The first is to subsidise the cost carried by digital-TV broadcasters of transmitting their programmes to satellite and cable platforms for three years, at a total subsidy of Bt2.5 billion. 
The subsidy will be provided by the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Research and Development Fund Commission.
The second measure will permit the digital-TV operators to include their programming related to the passing of King Rama IX – and aired during the 100-day mourning period, from October 13 to January 22 – as content that the NBTC takes into account in making deductions from their annual licence-fee payments.
Under existing NBTC rules, if 50 per cent of the overall programming of the broadcasters is deemed to benefit society, they can use such content to ask for a 15-per-cent reduction in the annual fee. 
The third measure is a planned extension of the due dates by which digital-TV broadcasters have to pay the fourth, fifth and sixth instalments of their upfront licence fees, with the extended dates to be decided later by the regulator.
The NBTC will also give away an additional 4 million vouchers, each worth Bt690, that people can redeem for the purchase of digital-TV set-top boxes next month, in a move aimed at hastening further expansion of digital-TV network coverage.
The final measure agreed by the watchdog will defer the plan to collect the annual universal service obligation (USO) fee from broadcasters, from this year to 2017. 
The NBTC has already announced new, lower annual licence-fee rates for digital-TV operators, which will take effect next year.
All these measures follow requests by the digital-TV companies that the NBTC help them find ways to ease their financial burden amid continued business difficulties.
The broadcasting committee of the NBTC held an auction in December 2013 that resulted in the granting of 24 digital-TV licences to 17 winning bidders the following April. 
The total value of the licence payments to be made was Bt50.86 billion, spread over six years.
 There are now only 16 operators left, operating 22 channels between them, after the regulator decided to revoke two licences held by Thai TV Co following the company’s refusal to pay the second instalment of its upfront licence fees late last year. 
Takorn added that this year, after deducting administrative costs, the NBTC expected to transfer around Bt4.3 billion of the regulatory fees to the state coffers.