BBC to stop Thai service

[kamui]

EXCLUSIVE: BBC to stop Thai service

 

Published on October 17, 2005

The Nation

 

Cost-cutting forces end to 65 years of Thai-language news coverage. The British Broad-casting Corporation (BBC) will terminate its Thai-language radio service on December 31, thus ending a proud 65-year history of excellent news coverage and in-depth reporting from and about Thailand.

 

The decision, to be announced officially on October 25, was made earlier this month as part of the BBC?s cost-cutting measures designed to allow the news giant to redirect more of its resources into its World Service in Arabic.

 

The one-hour Thai programme, first broadcast on 27 April 27, 1941, will be the only Asian language service to be axed, a highly placed source in London revealed.

 

The source added that the nine staffers of the BBC Thai service - including section head Somchai Suwannaban - had not yet been notified about the impending announcement and nor had they been previously consulted when the decision was being made to terminate the service.

 

Based on a trade union-negotiated deal, the laid-off Thai workers will be given the equivalent of a full year?s salary in severance pay.

 

Initially, both the news corporation?s Nepalese and Tamil-language services had also been targeted for termination, but given the restive political situation in both Nepal and Sri Lanka a decision was made to allow the services to continue.

 

Nepal has been rocked with political instability after King Gyanendra assumed absolute power last February, thereby precipitating further deterioration in already deep-rooted hostilities between government forces and Maoist guerrillas. In Sri Lanka, meanwhile, an ongoing civil war between the Sinhalese-majority government and Tamil guerrillas has remained high on the international news agenda.

 

The BBC?s Thai service has previously survived repeated attempts to become a casualty of continuous cost-cutting measures that affected certain foreign-language programmes.

 

Some observers believe that one factor influencing the decision this time is Thailand?s comparative openness and democratic freedom, which BBC chief executives probably felt obviated the need for the organisation?s continued service in the country.

 

Ironically, however, observers also pointed out that the service?s termination comes at an inauspicious time for press freedom in the country. They say Prime Minister Thaksin Shinwatra has been trying to muzzle the Thai media in general and to restrict reports about the conflicts in the three southernmost provinces of Yala, Narathiwat, and Pattani.

 

Since the insurgency erupted on January 4 last year, the BBC Thai service has been devoted to reporting in depth on the situation, often raising the ire of government officials with some of its interviews and analyses.

 

In addition to the Thai service, almost all Central European-language services - including those in Polish, Czech, Slovak, Romanian, Hungarian and Macedonian - will be slashed. The German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese and Malaysian services were already cancelled earlier as it had been found that more and more listeners of these services preferred to tune in to the BBC?s standard English-language programme.

 

The BBC World Service, funded by the Foreign Office of the Commonwealth (FOC), currently operates radio services in 43 languages. In the Asia-Pacific region, the BBC has programmes in Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Burmese.

 

The BBC has asked the FOC for ?45 million (Bt3.2 billion) to establish an Arabic-language television channel for the Middle East and North Africa.

 

Before it was abruptly cancelled in April 1996, the BBC used to operate an Arabic-language TV channel. Most of the 150 staffers of the channel subsequently went on to form the now well-known Al Jazeera satellite news channel.