(presently National News Bureau of Thailand headquarters and NBT World TV Station and formerly UHF Channel 29, from 15 to 31 January 2008.
The resulting public debate gave rise to iTV, a privately owned channel which started broadcasting in 1995 under a 30-year state concession.
Nation Multimedia Group, a major news and publishing company and shareholder, pulled out and was replaced by Shin Corporation, a telecommunications conglomerate owned by the family of Thaksin Shinawatra, who was elected prime minister in 2001.
The Surayud administration formed a task force headed by Somkiat Tangkijvanich to conduct a possibility study to transform iTV into a fully public-financed television station.
This effort resulted in the proposal of the Public Broadcasting Service Act, in which legal measures were put in place to protect the new TV station against both political and commercial influence.
In the latest example (March 2016) Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha slammed the public broadcaster for being "one-sided" in its coverage of the ongoing drought crisis.
The junta leader was angry because he thought Thai PBS was giving too much emphasis to people's suffering while neglecting what the government was doing to alleviate problems.
He pointed to the fact that Thai PBS is financed by the state, which he claimed should oblige it to propagate government news releases.