Thai PBS asked to air House meetings
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The Thai PBS television channel was pushed by the House Committee on Parliamentary Affairs yesterday to help lighten the load on NBT, which has to provide live coverage of all parliamentary meetings.
Democrat party-list MP Boonyod Sukthinthai, in his capacity as spokesperson of the committee, revealed the outcome of the panel’s Thursday meeting, which was held to discuss the live broadcast of joint House-Senate meetings as well as special House of Representatives meetings.
At the meeting on Thursday, the panel asked Thai PBS executives to share the duty of broadcasting parliamentary meetings with the NBT channel. So far, NBT is the only television channel responsible for broadcasting all Parliament meetings.
The committee also wants Thai PBS to broadcast the upcoming House meeting that will be held from Monday to Wednesday to discuss the 2013 budget bill.
However, Thai PBS representatives said they had to consult with the channel’s board of directors before they could make any decisions.
Meanwhile, Boonyod said the committee had suggested that Thai PBS could choose to only broadcast the 11am to 1pm House question-and-answer sessions if it is unable to provide airtime for the entire meeting. However, Thai PBS representatives pointed out that the channel already had a fixed schedule to broadcast midday news, and developments on parliamentary meetings were usually included as breaking news.
They also added that if they were to broadcast the upcoming House meeting’s question/answer session, they could only do so for an hour, from 11am to noon, and the rest of the session could be broadcast at the end of the midday news.
In response to reporters seeking further details, Thai PBS representatives said they needed to meet the board of directors before making any decisions.
