MCOT to let True Visions air commercials

BANGKOK: -- The MCOT board has approved the airing of commercials through its private pay-TV concessionaire True Visions, True Corp's chief executive Supachai Chearavanont said Wednesday.

He explained that under the MCOT agreement, True Visions, a subsidiary of True Corp, would also be broadcasting MCOT programmes on five channels free of charge. He added that the concession fees would remain unchanged at 6.5 per cent of the revenue.

-- The Nation 2009-03-11

Joining the dots . . .

True is owned by CP.

CP is a supporter of PAD

PAD is a supporter of Dems

Dems help their mates.

(And of course there is a director of CP company in the Cabinet)

CP was a big time Thaksin supporter in his days.

He even invented jets for chickens deal so that CP got a bit of extra business. They are the ones who profited from chicken flew, too, and they are the ones who saw tremendous growth in their 7-11 franchise while ordinary people were pitched against Tesco.

CP was a big time Thaksin supporter in his days.

He even invented jets for chickens deal so that CP got a bit of extra business. They are the ones who profited from chicken flew, too, and they are the ones who saw tremendous growth in their 7-11 franchise while ordinary people were pitched against Tesco.

Great point, it always struck me as rather odd that Tesco always took the heat for shutting down the "mom and pop" operations whereas 7-11 hardly get a mention.

That campaign is run by suppliers who lost their share to tescos, not by mom and pops themselves who are happily stocking their shops at any "killer" discount store they can. Suppliers are naturally pissed at competition.

Could we then hope for a reduction of the monthly fees ... which are way over board considering the quality of the programs proposed ... (in my area no other choices .... cable is not an option !)

Great,thats all we need ,more commercials on True Visions.There are probably more commercials and program promos on the English stations than on any free to air TV per hour.Count them!! To make it worse most of the programs,sports & movies are B Grade American junk.I havent watched any of the sports & variety channels since i signed up. Its got to the stage now where i am only watching BBC,CNBC,a bit of CNN(no larry king) and a few programs on History(most are repeated all year). If Thai TV were to put English subtitles on their news and farang movies i would probably scrap True Visions,,ironically the farang movies on free to air Thai TV are usually good ones.True visions must have repeated Karate Kid,Terminator and DieHard 1,2,3 500 times.Hopless.Not worth the 70 aust dollars per month. Mai pen rai!

You complain that HBO has a shitty movie selection? Is there any better legitimate channel? Don't forget they have to run something 24/7, not once a week.

Ads on True are a tricky issue - they originally advertised themselves as ad free alternative, many Thai customers still remember that and don't want their kids exposed to endless snack promotions that dominate free TV.

On the other hand, ad revienue might lead to reduction in charges, or buying better programs, though they already get everything available in this region.

On the other hand, ad revienue might lead to reduction in charges, or buying better programs..

Totster

That campaign is run by suppliers who lost their share to tescos, not by mom and pops themselves who are happily stocking their shops at any "killer" discount store they can. Suppliers are naturally pissed at competition.

Excellent point. The shadowy middlemen run loads of stuff in Thailand and certainly dont want their nice easy position spoilt, and they have influence.

As for Ads. Probably needed to support the business model if the truth be told. If there is any up in arms stuff, they'll probably add a few extra entertainment channels and customers will be happy again.

The thing is, if ads increase their revenues, they will need to invest in something, and that generally means buying more programs/reducing charges.

I understand it's a bit silly to expect them to reduce monthly fees, but we will simply get more programs for the same price.

So far their policy was to to invest in production of local material, like TNN news or The Master show. Too bad we are too foreign to enjoy that, but they've already got ALL English content available, haven't they.

At most they can only upgare all Gold subscribers to Platinum, but then, what happens with Platinum?

Great. I'm sure they'll stick to the bare minimum required to make it cost-effective and not shove ads down our throats at every available opportunity like they do on regular Thai TV, Tescos, the skytrain with that annoying <beep> TV in every <beep> cartridge and every <beep> platform.

Great. I'm sure they'll stick to the bare minimum required to make it cost-effective and not shove ads down our throats at every available opportunity like they do on regular Thai TV, Tescos, the skytrain with that annoying <beep> TV in every <beep> cartridge and every <beep> platform.

Oh Im sure they will ram adsd down our thraots but as long as they dont stuff every movie and football match full of commercial breaks it can be avoided

They might try to overwrite ads on CNN/BBC, and, god forbid, even include ads in Premier League football on TrueSport channels, they have the rights, I think.

Mostly, though, it's about their own, in house productions, I believe. From that point of view it's not likely they'd subsidize price of HBO with revenues from their reality shows. At some point they'd probably have to separate imported and their own programming altogether.

You complain that HBO has a shitty movie selection? Is there any better legitimate channel? Don't forget they have to run something 24/7, not once a week.

Ads on True are a tricky issue - they originally advertised themselves as ad free alternative, many Thai customers still remember that and don't want their kids exposed to endless snack promotions that dominate free TV.

On the other hand, ad revienue might lead to reduction in charges, or buying better programs, though they already get everything available in this region.

HBO really is pretty bad here.  Movies which have never seen the inside of a theater seem to be the flick of choice.  But thsi is not Thailand only.  THis is for all of SE Asia.

In the US, HBO offers quality programming.  I just don't understand why they cannot offer the same lineup here.

In Asia they are competing with Star, I believe. Star has 20th Century Fox deal and those movies are not shown on HBO. Star got James Bond and Star Wars, too.

I seriously doubt quality of the HBO US programming, btw. With reasonable torrent speeds I monitor new releases daily, there's simply not enough quality stuff to run 24/7, 90% of all movies are absoute &lt;deleted&gt;.

Of course we don't get separate HBO series or family or whatever it's called in the US.

There are a number of us who were hoping that Truevisions could televise ads so they could stop cutting out some of the international sporting events that they have been doing this year in order to increase their bottom line. For example, there were less American football games this year and even some of the playoff games were omitted. Then, while the FA Cup was shown throughout southeast Asia, it was not shown in Thailand. Also, championship boxing matches have been cut to almost none.

However, it was announced in the newspaper this morning that while Truevisions can gain revenue from showing advertisements, they will use the money to develop more local programs.

Anyone know what happened to the ads they started running on True Vision Series last year? They would interupt a program to advertise every 10 mins or so. It only thankfully seemed to last a month or so and then went back to normal ie just advertising between programmes.