Surin Krttayaphongphun, executive vice president of Bangkok Entertainment Co – the operator of Channel 3 said the station developed a social media strategy after learning that many brands were using social media to boost sales.
“It really works. So our station established a social media team to take responsibility for creating content to promote our top-rated TV shows and engage with target audiences,” Surin said.
Channel 3 said the number of social media users engaging with the public continued to rise.
However, some advertisers believe that social media has hurt TV stations by weakening ratings.
Surin hopes that Channel 3 being equipped with a social media strategy will result in the country’s second largest TV channel being more attractive to online users.
The country’s No 3-ranked station, Workpoint TV, aims to monetise its social media strategy efficiently.
Chalakorn Panyashom, chief operating officer of Workpoint Entertainment, the operator of Workpoint’s TV digital channel, said that after the channel offered top-rated programmes via social media, it resulted in a rating boost for its live TV shows.
“We use the social media network to remind our audience to get updates about which TV shows are live. We believe that when they see those live shows on their Facebook Live feed, they will turn to the TV screen to enjoy the programme,” Chalakorn added.
“We do not see Facebook Live as a threat for entertainment shows, but we have found that this new feature appears to attract viewers from news programmes.”
The strategy has also created a new revenue stream for the station, he said. So far this year, the station’s content supplied to YouTube has generated more than Bt50 million in revenue, compared with Bt20 million for all of last year, he said. Total revenue from all social media platforms has reached between Bt60 million and Bt70 million so far this year.
Chalakorn said Workpoint Enter-tainment was working with social media platforms such as YouTube, Line TV and Facebook, with a significant share of its revenue for video content provided via those platforms.
He said this new revenue stream was continuing to rise. Therefore, the company was seeking further collaborations with big players in this market like Facebook to reach a global audience. In the meantime, the company would expand its social media team from 10 people to 30 people next year.
Michael Namatinia, president for the Asia and Pacific market at the Thai unit of Norway-based Vizrt, said that apart from having a professional TV-programme production team, TV stations should have a strong social media team to create and publish stories with compelling videos and high-quality graphics for distribution on-air, online and via social media, such as official websites, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram,
Dew Waratangtragoon, deputy chief executive officer of One31, said the country’s No 5-ranked station collaborated with social media giants to help increase its audience share and revenue. “We believe that revenue from our live programmes via main screens [TV screens] will represent 80 per cent of our total income while the rest will come from revenue sharing with online media platforms like You Tube and Line TV,” Dew said.
Ongart Singlamphong, executive vice president of television business for RS – the operator of Channel 8 said the station also used social network to communicate with its audience and update them on shows and promotion campaigns.

TOT wants to sign the official contract as soon as possible, which could help improve the state agency’s financial performance, he added.
He has also considered talking with AWN to upgrade this 3G-2.1GHz service to a 4G service.
Last month AWN and TOT signed a six-month contract that enables AIS trial-roaming on the state agency’s 2.1GHz spectrum. During the trial period, AWN will provide a wireless broadband service to its mobile-phone subscribers on the spectrum. The company will pay a monthly roaming fee of Bt325 million to TOT.
This six-month contract is part of the planned official strategic partnership on TOT’s 2.1GHz service. The official contract would last until 2025.
Under the planned contract, AWN would roll out 11,000 new cellular base stations for 2.1GHz to add to TOT’s existing 5,320 base stations for 2.1GHz. Then TOT would set a budget of Bt10 billion a year to purchase the total network capacity of the new base stations.
Then AWN would purchase 80 per cent of the total bandwidth capacity of the combined TOT and AWN base stations to serve its own subscribers. It would pay TOT about Bt13.9 billion per year for the bandwidth. This means TOT would gain net Bt3.9 billion revenue a year from the deal.
TOT would rent the remaining 20 per cent capacity to mobile virtual network operators.
TOT recently leased its telecommunication towers to AWN forBt3.6 billion a year for 15 years and leased its 2G-900 megahertz network to AWN for five years for Bt2 billion a year.
True concession ends

In a separate matter, TOT has three options to deal with the concession expiration of True Corp’s fixed telephone service in October next year, Montchai said.
Article 70 of the Public-Private Joint Venture Act 2013 specifies three options for a state concession-holder dealing with a concession endings: it can continue the operation itself, allow the concession-holder to continue the operation or award the concession to a new operator.
TOT has set up a committee to consider what will be the best option in this case but the state agency is likely to step in to operate True’s fixed telephone service itself after the concession ends, Montchai added.
True won the concession from TOT to run 2.6 million fixed telephone lines in Bangkok and its outskirts for 25 years. As of last month, the service had 1.26 million users.
TT&T won the concession from TOT to operate 1.5 million fixed telephone lines in provincial areas, except Greater Bangkok. Currently the service has 384,000 customers. The concession will end in October 2018.
TOT has gained around Bt1 billion a year and Bt400 million a year from the True and TT&T concessions respectively.
Montchai said that after the TT&T concession ended, TOT would operate the company’s service itself, given TT&T was bankrupt.
Montchai said that TOT was in the process of hiring an adviser to study its plan to set up National Broadband Network Co (NBN) with CAT Telecom, in line with the order of the State Enterprise Policy Commission for TOT and CAT to merge their redundant three core businesses.
TOT will take the lead in merging the agencies’ redundant transmission and fibre-optics networks into the NBN, while CAT will take charge of merging their Internet gateway and submarine-cable networks into Neutral Gateway Network Co, and their Internet data centres into IDC Co.