Thaicom warned after PM's show hit by signal disruption

From www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2010/04/26...disrup-30127943.html

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has instructed NBT, the state-run television chan-nel - to pursue legal action against people who sent a powerful signal to disrupt the broadcast of his weekly pro-gramme yesterday, director Rattana Charoensak said.

"The event was not unprecedented," she said.

In August last year, the PM's weekly live programme was disrupted twice - once from Government House and also from Muang Thong Thani. Former NBT chief Suriyong Huntasarn became a "casualty" after being trans-ferred from his post because of repeated technical broad-cast problems.

The tape of the programme "Confidence in Thailand with PM Abhisit" was disrupted at 9.06am, after being on-air for just three minutes. NBT ran a message to say: "We apolo-gise for the disruption of the signal". However the pro-gramme was run shortly after - replayed from start to finish - seven minutes later.

Yesterday's programme featured an interview with Abhisit and Army Chief Gen Anupong Paochinda.

PM's Office Minister Satit Wongnongtaey, who oversees the state-run station, said the broadcast problem was not caused by the station. He said an outside signal was sent to disrupt the show. NBT techni-cal staff solved the problem by using the station's other channels to broadcast the pro-gramme.

Rattana said the station checked with Thaicom Satellite officials to ask them where the source of the dis-rupting signal came from but Thaicom officials could not provide an answer.

However to prevent any repeat of the incident, she had ordered NBT technical staff to work with Thaicom officials to locate the signal source.

She said the station had been the target of similar problems several times but the outside source signal was not strong enough to collapse its signal for a long time. However this time the signal was so powerful it caused a technical snag. Programmes that were targeted previously were news reports relating to political developments and the red-shirt rallies.

She said although Thaicom had equipment to find out the source of disruption, they did not provide her with any answer. If the signal disrup-tions happened more often, she would look into the con-tract to take legal action against the satellite company, but "we won't yet take any action against them this time."

Rattana said Abhisit came to the station when the broad-cast of his programme was disrupted but he did not blame station officials as he understood what happened.

NBT station is overseen by the Public Relations Department and has been accused of being a government mouthpiece because whenever there is a change of government, station policies on the coverage of news changes to cater to demands of the latest politicians in power.