Channel 3 in an editing-room tizzy as blank screens loom
With the country's broadcasting regulator putting the clamps to Channel 3 and insisting that it's no longer allowed on satellite or cable TV, two of the station's series producers, Yossineed "Ja" Nanakorn and Arunocha "Nong" Panuphan, are understandably
Channel 3, perennially tops in the ratings, has formally lost its status as a free TV station, so what’s a producer to do? Ja and Nong are hoping management will quickly discover a solution and head off the “demotion”.
In the meantime, though, young Ja, who has two series currently on air, has announced on Instagram that one of them, “Rising Sun”, has been reedited, by which she means compressed so that it can finish this week. The show, starring Nadech Kugimiya and Urassaya “Yaya” Sperbund, almost made the distance – it’s been trimmed in the 12th of a planned 13 episodes – but Ja’s a little miffed after her trip to the cutting room.
Why, she asked Instagram in a bit of a rant, is the National Broadcasting and Telecommunication Commission in such a rush to get digital TV into every household, especially when not everyone’s ready? “The transmission capabilities don’t even cover the whole country yet and a lot of viewers don’t have the digital boxes. The audience should have a choice!”
Unfortunately Ja’s other series, “Sai See Plerng” with Araya “Chompoo” A Hargate and Nattawut “Por” Skidjai, still has a bunch of episodes left. “If Channel 3 analog faces a ‘blank screen’ situation, viewers will have to watch it via nuadgoong,” she said, meaning the vintage “shrimp’s moustache” antenna.
Nong, a veteran in the business, was full of sympathy. “I feel for Ja too. It’s a pity she has to cut her series short.” Nong’s the head of private studio Broadcast Thai Television and is worried about her own series, “Rai Rak Payak Gung-fu”, starring Rattaphum “Film” Tokongsup – it just went on the air on Sunday.
“It’ll be a pity if we have to cut it short too, or if viewers don’t get to watch it all the way through,” she said. We certainly empathise, but if worse comes to worst, there are, after all, YouTube and DVD.
Wives are never “free”
You’re never fooled by advertisements, are you? And yet, no matter how absurd or exaggerated they might be, there’s always someone ready to take them seriously.
“Buy one, get one” was the loud sales pitch on the social media for the Icon, a housing project in Nakhon Ratchasima. You buy a house and get another one free? No, you get a free wife with every purchase, apparently. Cue the women’s-rights activists, who slammed the ad online as an insult to their gender. “Women are not property!” dozens of not-actually-activist people agreed.
Project developer Boonma Imwiset had some explaining to do. Rather than denigrate women’s dignity by offering them for free as part of a sales deal, he says, the intention was to infer – in jest – that if you bought a house, you’d still have enough money left over for a nice wedding ceremony or a dowry for the bride-to-be. The firm has its own “attractive” bank-loan service, he pointed out.
Boonma apologised for confusing people – and specifically for misleading guys who thought they might get a free woman in the bargain. Maybe Boonman still doesn’t fully understand that the campaign is in poor taste, plain and simple.
