THAI
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ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE
Given the enormous number of FM and Medium wave radio stations in
Thailand, the audience to any foreign shortwave broadcasts is inevitably
small, but the latest audience research continues to show that the BBC Thai
Service is still the most popular. This was acknowledged to us privately
by a Voice of America official last year when VOA decided to suspend its
direct broadcasts in Thai and rely on distribution of taped programmes by
its Embassy.
What has for some time been clear, however, is that although the
audience in Thailand to the BBC Thai Service may be small, it is highly
influential. We have had repeated evidence that it includes not only
government officials and politicians but top army personnel, businessmen,
university lecturers and students and even members of the Royal Family.
Newspaper editors and journalists regularly use the BBC's news reports in
Thai as a prime source - this was particularly evident during the recent
upheavals in China, where we have seen word for word reprinting of our
Thai translations of BBC correspondents' reports from Peking (often
unacknowledged) in Thai newspapers. Commentaries on Thai or South-East
Asian affairs written by BBC Far Eastern Service talkswriters continue
to be reproduced in full (with acknowledgment) in influential Thai daily
newspapers such as Siam Rath, thereby reaching a much wider audience.
Further evidence of the importance attached in Thailand to the BBC Thai
Service has been seen in the eagerness with which visiting Thai
dignitaries - including the Foreign Minister ACM SiddhiSawetsila - agree
to be interviewed in Thai by the Service.
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