Cambodian Broadcasting Service (CBS)

Cambodian Broadcasting Service (CBS) is Cambodia’s leading commercial television group and a subsidiary of the Royal Group of Companies, one of the country’s largest conglomerates. Its channels include CTN, historically Cambodia’s most-watched television station in available audience data, and CNC, the country’s first 24-hour news service.

CBS launched CTN in March 2003 as a joint venture between the Royal Group and the Swedish media company Modern Times Group. CTN International followed in 2004, making CTN the first Khmer-language channel available overseas, subsequently distributed in the United States, Australia and elsewhere. MyTV launched in 2009 as Cambodia’s first youth-oriented channel, and CNC in 2012 as the country’s first 24-hour national news channel.

Media assets

Television: CTN Cambodia, MyTV Cambodia, CNC Cambodia, CTN International Cambodia

Ownership and governance

CBS is a private company incorporated with the Ministry of Commerce and operated by the Royal Group, which is built and controlled by Kith Meng, a dual Cambodian and Australian national holding interests in more than forty registered companies. Kith Meng is chairman and chief executive of the Royal Group and the ultimate private controller of CBS. No state shareholding in CBS or the Royal Group was identified.

The relevant connection to state authority is personal and political rather than proprietary. Kith Meng has been widely described as an adviser to Hun Sen, who served as Prime Minister until August 2023 and subsequently as President of the Senate; his son Hun Manet became Prime Minister following the July 2023 general election, which independent observers criticised for lacking genuine competition. Kith Meng holds the honorific Neak Oknha, conferred by royal decree on major donors to the state.

CBS’s participation in Cambodia’s digital television transition proceeded in two stages. In 2021 the country’s three leading privately owned broadcasting groups formed an alliance: a memorandum of understanding was signed on 18 February and a joint venture agreement on 26 August, by Kith Meng for CBS, the Royal Group and Digital Sky Multimedia; Hun Mana, daughter of Hun Sen, as chairwoman of Bayon Media High System Group; and Eng Chhay Nguon as chairman of Hang Meas Group. On 1 November 2022 the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Cambodian Television Alliance signed the company statute for Cambodian Digital Television, formalising the public-private structure that manages the national digital platform. Contemporary reporting records a seven-member board, one government representative and six alliance representatives, with Hun Mana elected chair for the first term. The venture was established to deliver the government’s digital migration, under which private broadcasters were required to move to the national platform ahead of the analogue switch-off.

David Ulmer served as Chief Executive from mid-2023 and left CBS in June 2026, subsequently taking a production role in the United States. No successor was identified in public sources reviewed as of August 2026.

Source of funding and budget

CBS is financed principally through commercial advertising, alongside programme distribution and content licensing. It publishes no financial statements, and no audited breakdown of its revenue was identified. No government subsidy to CBS has been disclosed, and none was identified during this review.

There is, however, documented evidence of direct personal financial support from the head of government to CBS journalists. Days after the 2018 recording described below, Hun Sen publicly acknowledged paying reporters at CNC and at Bayon, stating that the money was his own and that such support was important for the government. This was described as personal funding rather than a documented state-budget subsidy, but it represents a financial relationship between the head of government and the newsroom of a privately owned broadcaster.

Under the State Media Matrix, the Captured Private model applies whether or not predominant state funding is present, so the absence of a quantified state subsidy does not affect the classification.

Editorial independence

CBS’s editorial position is shaped by ownership and political proximity rather than by any formal instrument. No legal safeguard protecting journalistic independence within CBS outlets was identified, and no internal or external mechanism for independent editorial oversight was identified.

The clearest documented evidence of external control concerns personnel. In 2018, Radio Free Asia broadcast a leaked recording in which Prime Minister Hun Sen was heard demanding that Kith Meng remove CNC’s general director, Ouk Bora. Hun Sen warned that if Meng did not dismiss him, Meng would become his enemy, followed by a warning about the consequences for Meng’s business. In the same recording Hun Sen said that he and his wife had supported CNC staff financially. A senior Cambodian People’s Party official subsequently stated publicly that the Prime Minister had the right to intervene in the internal affairs of companies. The episode documents direct head-of-government intervention in an executive appointment at a privately owned broadcaster.

The relationship did not end with the 2023 succession. In June 2025, Hun Sen publicly thanked Kith Meng and his wife for establishing the CTN Foundation, a programme supporting border troops, which he said had been created at his request. Its launch was carried live on CTN, and Hun Sen and his wife contributed an initial 300 million riel. This does not establish that Hun Sen directs daily editorial decisions, but it demonstrates that the operational relationship between CBS’s owner and the Hun political leadership continued after the change of prime minister.

AI and digital policy

CBS has pursued several notable AI-related initiatives.

In March 2025, CNC launched an AI-powered multilingual news service on YouTube, translating Khmer bulletins into English, Arabic, French and Mandarin Chinese. CBS described it as the first Cambodian television service to use AI translation in this way.

In December 2025, CBS entered a partnership with Protege, a global supplier of training data for artificial intelligence, licensing what the companies described as the world’s largest library of Khmer-language television to train AI models. David Ulmer, then Chief Executive, said CBS envisaged a world in which future AI models had a full understanding of Cambodian culture, text and speech.

No publicly accessible CBS editorial policy governing the use of generative artificial intelligence in news production, the verification of AI-assisted material or the disclosure of AI-generated content to audiences was identified. The multilingual translation service and the training-data partnership are commercial and technological initiatives rather than editorial governance instruments. Cambodia’s government is developing a National AI Strategy, which Prime Minister Hun Manet described on 17 July 2026 as awaiting adoption.

Classification rationale

CBS remains classified Captured Private (CaPr), the Matrix model for outlets subject to editorial control by entities linked to state authorities in the absence of state ownership or state-appointed governing bodies.

On ownership and governance, the state does not control CBS. It is a private company controlled through the Royal Group by Kith Meng, with no identified state shareholding and no state-appointed directors. This is what distinguishes CBS from Cambodia’s State-Controlled outlets, TVK, RNK and AKP, each of which is a general directorate of the Ministry of Information staffed by civil servants.

On editorial control, the Matrix requires persistent and systemic control by entities linked to state authority, and warns against confusing this with ordinary political alignment. CBS meets that threshold on documented grounds rather than by inference from coverage. The 2018 recording establishes direct prime-ministerial intervention in a CBS executive appointment, accompanied by an explicit threat to the owner’s business and a statement that the Prime Minister had been supporting CNC staff financially, support he publicly acknowledged days later. A governing-party official then defended the intervention as legitimate. In June 2025 the same relationship was visible again in the creation of the CTN Foundation at Hun Sen’s request, launched live on CTN. RSF reports that CNC’s licence framed its mission in terms of communicating national progress. The owner’s chairmanship sits alongside the former Prime Minister’s daughter in the governance of the national digital platform. No countervailing editorial charter, oversight body or complaints mechanism exists.

On funding, no state subsidy has been disclosed or identified, and CBS operates commercially. The documented personal payments from the head of government to CNC journalists are not a state-budget subsidy but are relevant to the editorial-control finding. The Captured Private model accommodates outlets with or without predominant state funding.

August 2026