National Broadcasting Services of Thailand (NBT)

The National Broadcasting Services of Thailand is the broadcasting service of the Government Public Relations Department (PRD). It is a government broadcasting service operated by a department under the Office of the Prime Minister, managed within the civil service structure, with a mandate to communicate government policy. It operates the NBT2HD national television network, four regional digital channels, the English-language NBT World, and Radio Thailand, which transmits on roughly 145 frequencies.

Media assets

Television: NBT2HD, carried on digital terrestrial channel 2 on the PRD multiplex; four regional digital networks serving the Central, Northern, Northeastern and Southern regions; NBT World, the English-language service launched in 2013 and now distributed online

Radio: Radio Thailand, broadcasting on some 145 frequencies across AM and FM; Radio Thailand World Service, broadcasting in six languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, Japanese, Vietnamese and Thai

News agency and digital: the National News Bureau, which supplies wire copy to government and commercial media; thainews.prd.go.th; thailand.prd.go.th

Ownership and governance

NBT has no separate legal personality. It is a broadcasting service of the PRD, which sits under the Office of the Prime Minister and is headed by a Director-General appointed through the civil service. Sudruetai Lertkasem holds that post. There is no board, no trust, no licence-fee mechanism, and no governing statute establishing NBT as an entity distinct from the department that runs it. Senior editorial positions are civil service appointments, and the department describes its mission as informing domestic and foreign audiences of government policies and activities.

This is the structural distinction between NBT and Thailand’s other national broadcaster. Thai PBS was created by the Thai Public Broadcasting Service Act 2008 as an independent public organisation with its own governing board and earmarked excise-tax funding. NBT has none of those features. Thailand therefore operates two nationwide non-commercial broadcasters under entirely different governance models, only one of which has statutory insulation from the executive.

The PRD’s position on editorial control has been stated plainly. When NBT recruited presenters and producers from the closed opposition-aligned channel Voice TV in 2024, the Director-General defended the hiring as normal industry practice while affirming that the department would continue to set the policy and direction of NBT2HD because it is a state-owned station.

NBT’s transmission licences fall under the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission. The NBTC has developed and publicly consulted on a television and broadcasting roadmap for 2026 to 2030 in preparation for the expiry of digital terrestrial licences in 2029, covering licence renewal, over-the-top regulation and a proposed national streaming platform; consideration of the roadmap was still continuing in July 2026. The outcome will shape the terms on which NBT holds spectrum in the next decade.

The political environment in which the department operates has been unstable. The Constitutional Court removed Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra on 29 August 2025 over a leaked telephone call with the Cambodian politician Hun Sen. Anutin Charnvirakul took office on 7 September 2025 with the support of the opposition People’s Party on condition that he dissolve Parliament within four months. He did so in December, and at the general election of 8 February 2026 his Bhumjaithai Party won a plurality; voters at a referendum held the same day approved beginning the process of drafting a new constitution. Anutin was reconfirmed as Prime Minister on 19 March 2026 and his second cabinet was sworn in on 6 April. NBT’s leadership and mandate were unaffected by any of it, which is itself the point: the broadcaster serves whichever administration holds office.

Source of funding and budget

NBT has no separately published budget and does not publish stand-alone accounts. It is financed principally through the PRD, whose FY2026 financing framework comprises 2.384 billion baht in Budget Act appropriations and 121.1 million baht in departmental own-source revenue, giving total resources of about 2.505 billion baht. State appropriations therefore account for roughly 95 per cent of the department’s financing. NBT maintains a television airtime rental service, so a small commercial element exists, but no NBT-specific split between appropriated and self-generated income is publicly identified. The PRD publishes departmental annual reports and audited financial statements; these cover the department as a whole rather than the broadcaster. Foreign assistance, principally Japanese grants, has historically financed equipment and facilities.

The figure most often cited in connection with state media spending requires care. During the 2024 budget debate the opposition challenged an allocation of 2.94 billion baht for government advertising and public relations. That sum was the total across ministries and agencies rather than the PRD’s departmental budget, and the criticism concerned duplication: more than 600 million baht of overlapping projects, with the Office of the Prime Minister, the Internal Security Operations Command and the Defence and Interior ministries all running related campaigns. The substance of the objection was that public money was funding government self-promotion.

Editorial independence

No statute guarantees editorial independence at NBT, and no mechanism exists through which such a guarantee could be enforced. The broadcaster is part of a department of the executive, its senior editorial staff are appointed through government channels, and its stated purpose is the communication of government policy. Media analysts interviewed for State Media Monitor in January 2024, March 2025 and April 2026 described programming that tracks government messaging closely, with defined editorial mandates and little scope for critical coverage of the administration of the day.

The border conflict with Cambodia placed that arrangement under scrutiny. Fighting broke out in July 2025, resumed on 8 December 2025, and was accompanied throughout by what observers described as narrative warfare conducted across broadcast and social platforms on both sides, with official casualty figures and territorial claims diverging sharply between the two countries. The joint statement renewing the ceasefire on 27 December 2025 addressed this directly: both governments undertook to refrain from disseminating false information in order to reduce tensions. The inclusion of false information and official communication in the ceasefire arrangements shows that management of the information environment had itself become part of the de-escalation process.

AI and digital policy

Thailand has no binding national framework governing the use of artificial intelligence in news production. Two draft instruments prepared between 2022 and 2023, a royal decree on business use of AI systems and an act promoting AI innovation, were consolidated into a single set of draft principles put to public consultation in June 2025. In July 2026 the Electronic Transactions Development Agency released draft AI legislation for public consultation, which closed on 14 August 2026. The draft adopts a risk-based structure modelled on the EU AI Act and includes machine-readable identification requirements for AI-generated content. It remains a draft, and its transparency provisions are framed as general obligations rather than as editorial standards for broadcasters.

Sector-specific guidance has emerged in the meantime, including from the Office of the Consumer Protection Board, which requires clear identification where advertising imagery or video has been generated or altered by AI, and from the National Cyber Security Agency, which issued AI security guidelines in September 2025. None addresses newsroom practice.

State Media Monitor identified no publicly accessible PRD or NBT editorial policy setting binding rules for generative AI, synthetic media, human verification, or disclosure of AI-assisted content to audiences. PRD is nevertheless actively adopting the technology: ministerial direction in October 2025 encouraged its use in production and fact-checking, and the department has since expanded AI training and international cooperation, including with Xinhua. The Director-General has publicly stressed that AI use in media should be transparent, ethical and trustworthy. No published newsroom-level implementation standard was identified.

Classification rationale

NBT remains classified State-Controlled Media (SC), and it is among the least ambiguous cases in the State Media Monitor dataset.

It is state-operated without qualification. NBT is not a company, a trust or a statutory corporation. It is a broadcasting service of a government department within the Office of the Prime Minister, without separate legal personality, assets or accounts. There is no ownership question to examine because there is no intermediate entity between the broadcaster and the executive.

It is state-governed. There is no board, no independent appointing body and no protected tenure. Senior editorial positions are filled by civil service appointment, and the department has publicly affirmed that it sets the policy and direction of the television service. The contrast with Thai PBS, which has a governing statute, an independent board and an earmarked funding stream, establishes that the absence of these features at NBT reflects a deliberate institutional choice rather than a national norm.

It is predominantly state-funded. NBT draws its resources from the PRD, whose FY2026 financing framework is roughly 95 per cent Budget Act appropriations, with a small departmental own-source component. There is no licence fee, no endowment and no substantial independent commercial base.

Its editorial agenda is directed by the state. The mandate is the communication of government policy, stated as such by the department. Interview evidence gathered across three years describes programming aligned to government messaging with little room for critical coverage.

August 2026