Somchai new Thai PBS chief
The Thai PBS policy committee yesterday appointed veteran journalist Somchai Suwanban as Thai PBS managing director, while his predecessor Thepchai Yong congratulated him via Twitter.
Somchai resigned from the policy committee to apply for the top post.
Somchai, who has a degree in economics (public finance), entered the newspaper world after the pro-democracy rally on October 14, 1973 and co-founded Thailand Business Journal, the country’s first business newspaper. He spent the next eight years at Thai and English publications including Chao Thai (‘Thai People’), Khemthit Turakit (“Business Compass”), The Nation, Bangkok Post and Business Times, and was a founder of the political magazine Soo Anakhot (“Into The Future”) and the Economic Reporters Association.
He travelled to work with the BBC in London in 1981 as a news anchor, and was promoted to a senior producer position and to Thai division head in 1992. He was later transferred to head the Vietnam and Myanmar division, then became Southeast Asia regional editor until he retired from the BBC in 2006. During his stay in London, he also worked as editor of Samaggi Samagom, the journal of the Thai Association in the UK, and founded Siang Thai (“Thai Voice”) in the UK.
