Hanoi's Mr TV is Ready to Battle Media Moguls

Eric Ellis, Hanoi

05/21/1993

PHAM Khac Lam gives the impression that he quite enjoys the sport of keeping the moguls of the global media industry dangling.

As the most powerful man in Vietnamese broadcasting, Mr Lam, a shrewd and experienced former Cold War warrior, will play the central role in deciding who - if anyone - will be "invited to cooperate" with Vietnam to develop commercial television in this fast-changing country.

"I've not invited these people, they have come to me," he said of his Australian suitors - representatives of the Nine Network's Mr Kerry Packer, News Ltd's Mr Rupert Murdoch and the ABC's Mr David Hill. "I welcome that and of course I am pondering which will be the more useful for our country."

There can be no doubt that Vietnam Television, of which Mr Lam is director-general, could use help.

In its 23 years it has helped spread the communist message around the country, and was crucial in rallying morale during the last years of the war with the United States.

But these peaceful days, it broadcasts just five hours a day on two channels (there are plans for a third) using 20-year-old Japanese, Russian and Hungarian equipment.

The 20-year-old Czech outside broadcast van in the car-park doubles as the studio VTV doesn't have.

Also in the car-park are six big satellite dishes. "That one over there was a gift from Ted Turner," Mr Lam said. "Those two over there were gifts from France. That one over there is from Star TV of Hong Kong."

And the huge one on the roof of VTV's decaying Soviet-designed office?"That was a gift from the US military when they went home from the south."

Mr Lam has a plan for VTV. It's all about nation-building.

"We must have three channels at the same time for the viewers to choose what they can look at," he said.

"Now it is only a plan because we do not have the material, technology and resources to do it.

"The person who will co-operate with us to achieve our aims will be holding the ace."

In many respects, the process is a metaphor for the dilemmas that confront this proud nation.

Here, as with other sectors, the capitalist world beats a path to its door, eager to share this vast emerging market of 70 million people. Vietnam welcomes this procession, knowing it can have the best the world offers.

But the one-party State is strongly conscious of nation-building, repeatedly setting goals and often making it up as it goes along in response to the offers it gets.

"Money is a factor but it will not be the decisive factor," Mr Lam said.

"We place more emphasis on good will in the spirit of mutual respect.

"We have three programming goals: information, education and entertainment

"At present I have not chosen anything but I shall prefer the offer which fulfils these purposes.

"We can create whatever we want with whatever resources we want to use. We will not rush into this."

Diplomats and analysts in Hanoi, within and without the television bidding process, say there is no doubting Mr Lam's political credentials. Said one: "They are impeccable, they are close and they are old."

Mr Lam himself says there is only one person above him to decide: the Prime Minister, Mr Vo Van Kiet, who will visit Australia next week.

Mr Kiet's scheduled visit to the Nine headquarters in Sydney, reported in the Financial Review earlier this week, has since been pulled from his itinerary.

Mr Lam has strongly positive feelings about Australia, which he visited in 1990 as part of an Australian Government special visit programme. That was when he first met the ABC's Mr Hill.

Mr Lam said the turning point in his life was the experience, as a 15-year-old, of being given an orange by "Uncle" Ho Chi Minh. It was almost 50 years ago in his small mountain village in central Vietnam, when Ho's communist guerillas took a break from fighting the French colonials.

By comparison, getting a business proposal from Kerry Packer, Rupert Murdoch or David Hill is no big deal.