BANGKOK – Thailand 's TV producers took to the streets to protest against proposed changes to media regulation concerning the broadcast sector.

          The Radio-Television Broadcasting Professionals Federation submitted a letter of protest Thursday to the Prime Minister's office urging the country's interim gov't to postpone enactment of a new television rating system. The producers say the rating system to be introduced is unusual, unrealistic and impossible to put into practice. And they say it restricts artistic freedom.

          "Interpretation (of the law) could present a major problem to every producer," Viwat Wongphattarathiti, executive director of Super Jeew Co Ltd, said. His company has been producing children's programming for 17 years.

          The TV sector now joins movie producers and Internet operators in challenging new draft regulation being promoted by Thailand 's military-backed government. All three sectors see the legislation as thinly disguised attempts to restrict a sector, which acts as the country's main source of political opposition and one in which ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra was a deft manipulator.

          The proposed TV system will give a suitability rating to every TV program that goes to air. Ratings will then be used to specify what time of the day the show can be aired. A show designated as "content requiring parental guidance" will only be allowed to screen between 9am and 4pm on weekdays and 8pm to 5am on weekends and public holidays.

          Another problem is that the public has scarcely been informed either. "I don't think many Thai viewers know what those abbreviations used in the new rating system stand for," said Himron Chethawat, a parent and representative of the Family Network.

          The vague wording of the law has baffled and enraged many producers. For example, a program seeking the G-rating ("fit for all age groups") must not contain "scenes that inspire sadness or fright" and no "scenes that show inappropriate places for children". A program will be assigned a "PG" rating if it shows "people speaking with wrong grammar (except for humorous effects)."

          That could be taken to mean that shows depicting people speaking with poor grammar and without humor, or programs that show sad people, cannot be aired after 4pm on weekdays.
          "Say, if we want to have a scene in a pub, with a message that young kids should not go to pubs. We cannot do that, because we can't show a pub without attracting a PG rating," Arunosha Bhanupan, producer of a youth-oriented TV series "Nong Mai Rai Borisut," said.
          Initially, the new law was to have been put into effect this week (July 9). But producers and operators of TV stations said it is impossible to reshuffle the program schedule in time.
          "This law has been written without anybody ever consulting us," Wongphattarathiti said. "It was written by lecturers and scholars, whom we never met and who based their criteria on academic research and theses. (The TV industry) was only told about this law in the last month."

          Proposed new film legislation also introduces a rating system conceived with little industry consultation, but still allows the state to cut or re-edit films as it likes (Weekly Variety, May 7, 2007).

          The cabinet took a step back on regulation of the Internet last week when it announced that a court order would in future be needed to ban Websites, rather than acting simply on the instruction of the communication ministry. But video sharing site YouTube remains banned – as are several hundred other political and pornographic sites (Variety, July 4, 2007.)

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