The National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) has given final approval for the remaining 12 politics-oriented satellite television channels to resume broadcasts under strict conditions.
The channels yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), which requires them to change their channel names while their content must no longer relate to politics or create divisions within society.
Col Natee Sukonrat, chairman of the NBTC's broadcasting committee, said the channels must resubmit their applications to the NBTC to obtain pay-TV licences and clarify all their TV programming and broadcasting platforms.
The NBTC will consider licence approval next week after the applications are received. The licences granted will be for just a short period of one year.
"If they violate the MoU, their licences will be terminated immediately," he said.
Their stakeholders and executives would then be permanently banned from involvement in any broadcasting endeavour.
The 12 channels are MV5, DNN, UDD, Asia Update, P and P, 4 Channel, Blue Sky, FMTV, ASTV, Hot TV, Rescue TV and Student and People Network for Reforming Thailand Channel.
Earlier in June, two politics-oriented channels, Voice TV and T-News, were allowed to resume broadcasting under the same strict conditions.
The suspension of 14 political channels complied with an NCPO order, as it saw them as sowing the seeds of division in the country and making the situation worse during the political conflict.
The NCPO on the day of the May 22 coup shut down all television channels on every platform — terrestrial analogue, digital, cable and satellite — along with closing 6,000 community radio stations.
Meanwhile, the NBTC yesterday agreed to scrap the regulation on channel numbering, which TrueVisions is currently petitioning the Central Administrative Court against.
Col Natee said it will also issue a new regulation related to channel numbering, requiring that the 1st-36th channels must be reserved for the 36 digital TV channels on every platform including digital terrestrial, satellite and cable TV.
For the following 37th-60th channels, each platform operator can arrange the numbering themselves.
Under the previous regulation, platform operators could only number their first 10 channels themselves.
"We hope the change to this regulation will clear up viewer confusion over channel arrangements, which differ under each platform," Col Natee said.
The new regulation on channel numbering is being drafted and is expected to be completed this November with public hearings required.
As for the uncertain future of Channel 3 analogue TV, the channel is allowed to have free-TV status, according to the NCPO's 15th announcement.
However, once the new numbering regulation is implemented around November, Channel 3 will have a new problem as it will not have any channel number among the first 36 channels on each platform as they will be reserved for digital TV channels.