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Satellite TV and the Net help feed protest momentum and rally the troops
Komsan Tortermvasana and Vivat Prateepchaikul
ASTV dishes and monitors are fixtures at many locations around the key PAD protest sites. Mr Sondhi once said that the movement could not have achieved success without ASTV, his satellite-based television channel, and his popular www.manager.co.th website. |
The anti-government rallies staged by the People's Alliance for Democracy have entered their fourth month with protesters now firmly entrenched at Government House, in addition to the original site at Makkawan Bridge.
On weekends, tens of thousands of people are estimated to be at the various rally venues, and even on weekdays participation has been strong.
Crowds that size need to communicate - and the PAD braintrust needs to be able to communicate with them if the protesters' energy is to be harnessed successfully. Digital media in all their converging forms are certainly helping.
The first things that strike a visitor to the PAD protest sites are the two huge projection screens on the stage and more than one hundred 29-inch TV monitors scattered around the two sites so that supporters won't miss what's happening.
PAD leader Sondhi Limthongkul, who made his fortune in the media business, once said that the movement could not have achieved success without ASTV, his satellite-based television channel, and his popular http://www.manager.co.th website.
"ASTV is our most important tool. Without it, PAD would never have arrived at this point," declared Mr Sondhi at Government House.
It was true.
On the day when Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej told the police to shut down ASTV, claiming it was the mouthpiece of the PAD and bemoaning its incessant, sometimes rude, criticism of him, ASTV sent out an SOS broadcast to its audience for help to protect the station.
Within less than 30 minutes 5,000 supporters had formed human barricades and encircled the station to prevent the police from enforcing the PM's order.
What is ASTV?
It is Asia Satellite Television, a free-to-air broadcaster produced by Thaiday Dot Com Company, an affiliate of Manager Media Group Plc (the publisher of Manager newspapers).
ASTV broadcasts through an NSS-6 satellite with a KU-Band signal, currently providing four channels. It employs 600 people.
As the protests gather momentum, 80% of the staff are occupied with producing news programmes to broadcast on its News 1 channel. Staff producing normal programmes have been reassigned to PAD duty.
ASTV director Pramen Phukvapee said the station recruited as many staff as it could in order to accommodate expected work overload from the protracted protest rally.
ASTV now has three teams to cover the rally. The first is in the studio working on technical production and graphics to use with live broadcasts of events from its outside broadcast vans.
A supporting team is deployed at the station and is on standby 24 hours and ready to solve any problem in case of blackouts.
The third team is on stage at Government House and Makkawan Bridge. Each stage has five to seven staff equipped with digital video cameras, plus roving cameras around the protest site to report the protest atmosphere and to document any events in case of emergency.
Broadcast vans will send signals to the ASTV station at Baan Chao Phraya, Mr Sondhi's residence.
The studio team will mix the broadcasts and then send them to Hong Kong via video streaming on the internet. Hong Kong will then uplink the broadcast to Asia Satellite and relay the broadcast to the grounds with a footprint covering not only Thailand but Southeast Asia, Southern China, southern India, and North America.
Mr Pramen said that although the broadcast vans were the key components in the live broadcast of protest events, the supporting team in the studio could pick up the slack instantly if anything interrupted the activity in the onsite vans.
ASTV says that as many as five million households could be capable of watching its live broadcasts of the PAD rally. It has sold 300,000 dishes, excluding those sold by its agents and other satellite dish producers such as Samart and PSI, which can also pick up ASTV programmes.
The audience these days, of course, is not limited to those with the means to buy a dish. Anyone with a computer can monitor the PAD action on the ASTV website or at http://www.manager.co.th.
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