Field trip at MCOT

On the morning of the September 22^nd, 2010, all the sophomore students of Thammasat University had an educational field trip at MCOT, a Thailand broadcast station. It stands for “Mass Communication of Thailand", it is a very famous Thai news press channel. The creation of MCOT was in the 1955, and it was the first Thai television broadcaster. Before the year 2004, MCOT used to name as Thai Television Company Limited, but later it changed because it was reconstituted as a state enterprise. It registered as a public limited company on 24 August 2004.

Khun. Pratya

The characteristic of MCOT Television Station was reformed in November 2002 under a concept of “Modernine TV”. Modernine Television Station stood as a main business unit of the Company. Its broadcasting ran 24 hours a day from the host station in Bangkok to its 35 local network stations nationwide covering 87.0% of service areas in Thailand. The quality of all television programs has been improved under a concept of ‘Knowledge-based Society’. This concept has been changed from time to time from ‘TV of Modernity’, “Best of the Best’, ‘Modernity on Differences’, ‘Stock Station’, ‘Knowledge-based Entertainment’, ‘Knowledge-based Society’, and ‘Happiness on Weekend’. All of this television programs aim to offer not only entertainment but education too to the audiences.

We left from Thammasat University and reached MCOT around 9 o'clock. We were hosted by the only photographer in MCOT by Khun. Pratya.

We were meant to observe and study how to produce radio and television program. We had a chance to visit the studio, control room, presentation room, how to get the sources and where were they come from, and to watch the live program.

The first room we had entered was a small museum that contains many old equipments such as cameras, lights, microphone, television, and television transmitter.

This big machine is a Universal black&white TV Tape Recorder. The tape had the size of 2 inches. It was the first machine that was used in 1955 since the founding of the company. Its brand was RCA.

This is a Boom Microphone that was used to record TV programs. It aged more than 50 years.

Thai black&white television

This is the first black&white television camera that was used in Thailand in the year 1955. It was used to film the making of Thai play.

Light that was used during that time

This it the first colored TV Tape Recorder in Thailand. It had 625 lines with the size of 2 inches of the tape. Its brand was Ampex from America.

RCA stands for Radio Corporation of America owned by the man named David Sarnoff.

The second room that Khun. Pratyar led us was a small studio room. This is a permanent studio. There is no moving or changing the scene, stage or background. There are two programs that are produced by MCOT: “Samo-sorn-sukka-parb” and “Bai-nee-me-kum-torb.” These two programs are the none profit programs that are produced to give back the benefits to the society. They are educational programs that educate people about health-care and any kind of useful information. There are many other programs from MCOT that are made for the company's owned benefits such as “Chao-kao-kon,” it's a show that cooperates with the Nation company. Benefits are needed to satisfy the shareholders as MCOT is in the stock market of Thailand, it needs to return the benefits in order to get the company running. But the concept is remaining, to serve the best for the society.

There are many studios available in MCOT buildings, so the scene or stage of each programs can be permanent to provide many variety shows.

Most of this decorations in the scene are not real, they are manipulated and counterfeited from many items. For example books on the shelf are made of stickers the are pasted on a plastic cardboard which looks very real when camera is shooting during the show. The reason why they use the manipulated decorations is because it is cheaper and more flexible to move around.

There are many programs that are not produced by MCOT, they are sent to MCOT to broadcast.

“Dao-kra-jai” and “Bang-ruk-soi-kao” are examples of the tapes that are not made by MCOT, they are produced in their own studio and send it to MCOT to broadcast. But before the tapes are broadcast, they have to be censor by MCOT officers, not to violate the contract they made. Because MCOT wants to stand out its point, the concept of education and entertainment, the contents of the tapes must not include violence, which are different to channel 5 and 7.

The third room that we have been visited was the biggest studio in Thailand. But now there are many competitors that are private sector such as Kantana and WorkPoint that are competing to have the best source and to produce the best programs. While we were walking into the studio, we saw many staffs were setting it apart and clearing out the stage that was recently produced the show called “Suan-dok-roi-duang-jai.” It is a charity live show to raise the fund for Suan-Dok hospital. Khun. Prayut mentioned that the beautiful background decorations were created and designed by MCOT designed specialists.

This room used to host many famous shows such as Academy Fantasia, The Star, and many important royal events.

For each shows, it requires at least three cameras to shoot at different angle of the subjects. The room that holds cameras has to have a constant temperature by turning on the air-conditioner because these cameras require a low temperature condition.

After the third room, we had a chance to watch a live business program called “Money Daily.” We can see that the hosts can speak very fluently. They have a chance to prepare first, but while shooting they have to read from teleprompter to help them with more confident of what they are talking about.

The teleprompter

But sometimes the information in the teleprompter can be wrong. Our guest said that “it's not easy to be a host, you need to be well prepare and need to be alert any time in case of something happen. Your eyes are not only read from the teleprompter but also need look at the camera and the director. The director will point out which cameras the host should look at.

There are at least three cameras for each show

Another room was a news broadcasting room, which presents the news such as royal news, breaking news, and sport news. The news anchors will receive a script that have their names on it. They will have to remember and understand about what's on it. The script contains important information about the news. Keywords or the difficult words to pronounce will be marked or circled to be easier to read.

The news editor also need to receive a script to show the time line of what's going on in order.

How the news become a news?

Before it becomes a news, it has to go through many stages.

Firstly, the reporter or photographer will have to go to the scene to report or take pictures or video about what is happening there. After they got their stories, they have to write it in the computer and send it by email with photos and footage to their station which is MCOT as soon as possible, because some of the news are important and people need to know right away. They have to work fast and hard to get their jobs done. But if the reporter or photographer have enough time, they will edit their footages and photos before they send it to the station. They use program called “Final Cut Pro” to send the files, it's a special program to send faster.

“Thai News Agency (TNA)” is established in 1977., it could be counted as one of the main producers sustaining the Company's business advantages.

is very popular in Thailand, because it's known as the most reliable news agency. Theirs stories have to be very precise to gain the word “reliable” from audiences. They have to be sure about their stories so that they can broadcast them without making mistakes. They have to work fast to let people know about their stories as soon as possible. Teamworks between their staffs need to be very high cooperative. “Fast, Precise, Reliable” are their concepts.

Control Room is another room that we had visited: it's the place in a television studio in which the composition of the outgoing program takes place, in other word, specific room for producing news.  This room works as a filter that goes to every news, to choose and eliminate the importance of the news. It controls what's going to air.

Other channels

People in control room never stop working, they work 24/7.

Free TV is used for airing The Television Pool of Thailand such as channel 3,5,7,9 and 11. These channels are free, citizens can watch them freely without paying, people have variety choices to choose which channels they want to expose to.

Mother network is the main channel that produces and broadcasts and leads other channels in. Every channel has to broadcast the same live story. The mother network channel waits for the others to be stand-by and ready to be broadcasted live at the same particular time.

People are filtering the news

Presentation room is a room that perform after the Control Room. After the control room operated, stories will be sent to the Presentation Room to be aired and to broadcast it to the public. Presentation Room does the airing part. This is the final process of producing television programs, and this is where the tapes are presented. There are many constraint that limit the power of broadcast such as the time limit condition of each shows, so they must use their limited time wisely, to use it every seconds to benefits the most. People in Presentation Room will have to work 24/7 nonstop.

Khun. Prayut said that “the tapes of Korean series are sent here to aired in Thailand.” On weekdays, there are bars that running at the bottom in the television, those bars are about stocks which come from Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET).

There are three main process of the news that work as a water pipe: 

 1. news stories are like a water. 

 2. news stories are sent to the control room which works as a filter of water. 

 3. The filtered news stories are sent to final stage which is presentation room that will air them, it works as a valve of the tap.

There are many constraint that limit the power of broadcast such as the time limit condition of each shows.

Radio Broadcasting Station is another main business of MCOT. There are 62 radio stations under control of MCOT that broadcast in both central and regional areas under AM and FM systems. There are 9 radio stations in Bangkok; seven of them are FM and the other two are AM. The company has modified the management of central FM radio system to be the modernized radio stations called “Modern Radio”, it was improved to be more up to date.

Here are the nine stations in Bangkok:

FM 95 MHz or Look-Thoong-Maha-Na-Korn (ลูกทุ่งมหานคร) This frequency provide the “Urban Country Music”, the only station in MCOT that presents all Thai country songs, where most of the audience are the Thai country music listeners. There are variety of listeners: the factory workers, taxi drivers and the people who live in the rural areas.

FM 96.5 MHz or “Food for brain” (ความคิด) This frequency presents all facts which contains information about general news, stocks, economic, marketing, business, real estate, management, health, society and family by well-known MCs and each MC achieved specific expertise.

FM 97.5 MHz or “Seed 97.5 FM”, a radio station for new generations which is very popular in Thai teenagers. The station presents hot hits and current favorite songs with a neutral policy to present songs of all music companies including Thai and International songs.

FM 99 MHz or “Active Radio”, this station presents only about sport news for sport fans.

FM 100.5 MHz or “News Station” (ข่าวและสาระ), it's in high ranked for the best news station in Thailand. It contains a variety of contents by presenting various news such as economic, political, social, sports, technological news, and other different knowledge. The station also perform as the host broadcasting radio station for news breaks to radio network stations located nationwide at the beginning of each hour.

FM 105.5 MHz or “Eazy FM 105.5”, is not belong to MCOT anymore, MCOT already gave a concession to Bangkok Entertainment Plc. (BEC) or channel 3.

FM 107 MHz or “MET 107”, the radio station that present hot-hit international music only. DJs only speak English so that they have a wide range of audiences. The station also present fresh news, both local and international news at the beginning of every hour.

AM 1143 or “Listeners' Companion”, it mainly presents general knowledge, news and entertainment along with songs for life, hot-hit string and Indie songs from all music houses.

AM 1494 or “Wisdom and Morality”, this station has stayed along with the Thai society for more than 50 years. The station promotes the knowledge about national, religion and monarch institutes, culture and tradition. The main concept of this station is dharma.

All of the nine stations are broadcast through the satellite in the satellite room or “ห้องดาวเทียม.” The delay time is not more than 5 sec. Moreover, AM and FM systems use the same satellite to broadcast.

Now we are looking at the broadcast studio of FM 100.5. There are 3 people in each broadcast studio, including DJ, sound engineer, and technician who connecting for the phone and find information. At this time, DJ can find the information on their own, the station provide computer and internet connection for them. There is a television in the room to keep up with the current news or breaking news in case of the important things happen. Broadcast studios are all the same in the amount of people, the equipments provided. But there are variety of the “DJ.” The station is going to be popular or not depends on DJs. 

Nowadays some stations are mainly focus about good looking of the DJs more than the qualification. Every stations have their own target groups and different concepts. For example, FM 95 MHz, targeting on factory workers, taxi drivers and so on. Each stations has one station director; Vasu Lertjunya, the director of FM 95.

Todays, the advertising on the radio in rural areas are very cheap, so there are many radio stations created more than before. It is more difficult for central radio stations to broadcast with a clear frequency into rural areas, because they are intervened by the local radio's frequency. There is no law to prevent these local radio stations from intervene.

In radio broadcasting, sometimes a director of each stations will tape the show first and air it later: the information has to be very precise because DJs cannot say anything that is unpredictable. For example, the DJs can't talk about the weather forecast, because if it's not the same as it should be, the tape will be unusable. In addition DJs cannot talk nonsense unless it's a show for entertainment. For each studio, there always a director who will direct every particular scene from the opening to the end of the tape. The director also has to manage the time of each show to fit the limited time schedule. Timing is very important, they have to all of the limited time without leaving any seconds behind.

What about radio news broadcasting? 

 There are both live and taped reporting. The live one is done by a reporter reports the news at the real time, the signal is sent to the satellite and then broadcast right away. The reporters must be very professional and well-prepared for this kind of instantaneous works. The tape is usually done by the Thai News Agency.

What about the breaking news? 

When there are some emergency incidents happened in Thailand, breaking news can be inserted during the regular programs. For examples, an announcement from Centre for Resolution of Emergency Situation (CRES), or when the Prime Minister has an importance speech. These situations can suddenly be applied to pause or cancel all of the regular programs. For radio, the programs can be paused or canceled without losing any money, but for television broadcasting, it has to be assured that the government really give an order to pause or cancel the programs. Pausing or canceling the shows are very important because the station will not be paid for the time that has been lost. It really has a financial impact on television station when there is a crisis.

What about advertising? 

An Account Executive job is to find the spot for radio and advertisements on television. Spot is a gap between each programs so that it can be filled with advertisements. But if these agencies fail to reach the target of the stations, each of them will be eliminated. There are two ways to find a spot, the stations seek to offer with firms, and firms come to offer with the stations. It works in both ways to make an advertisement to make a valuable consideration to the listeners. Each radio stations have their own target groups, they have to find advertisements that match with their theme. For example, 99.00 FM is mainly focus about sports, so the advertisements should be anything that are connected with the theme such as “M150” and “Mineral Water.” The cosmetic products will not be suitable to this station. Moreover, different period of time cost different prices for advertisements. For example, the advertisements for “Kaow-Khon-Kon-Kaow” program will cost around 300,000 to 3,000,000 baht per minute.

BJM students, 22 Septermber 2010