Mediacorp

Mediacorp Pte. Ltd. is the state-owned media conglomerate of Singapore. Owned by Temasek Holdings—the investment arm of the Government of Singapore—it owns and operates television channels, radio, and digital media properties. It is headquartered at the Mediapolis development in Queenstown's One-north precinct, which succeeded Caldecott Hill, the long-time home of its predecessors, in 2015. As of 2022, Mediacorp employs over 3,000 employees; a large number of them are in both public and private sector broadcasting.

The company forms half of the mass media duopoly in the country alongside SPH Media Trust; the company was established in its current form in 1999, following the 1994 privatization of one of its predecessors—the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC)—as a group of state-owned enterprises known as Singapore International Media.

Mediacorp holds a monopoly on terrestrial television in Singapore, operating six channels broadcasting in the official languages of English (Channel 5 and the pan-Asian news channel CNA), Mandarin Chinese (Channel 8 and Channel U), Malay (Suria), and Tamil (Vasantham), as well as the streaming service meWatch. It also operates eleven radio stations, and the websites Today and 8days—both of which had previously operated as print publications.

Its monopoly on terrestrial television was briefly broken in the early-2000s by SPH MediaWorks. In 2004, amid struggles at its two channels, SPH sold the MediaWorks subsidiary to MediaCorp in exchange for stakes in its television and publishing businesses; only its Chinese-language Channel U would continue under MediaCorp. SPH divested its stake in MediaCorp in 2017 after Today ceased print publication.

The history of radio broadcasting in Singapore began with the formation of the Amateur Wireless Society of Malaya (AWSM) in April 1925, which launched shortwave transmission from a studio in the Union Building at Collyer Quay using a 100-watt transmitter lent by the Marconi Company under callsign 1SE (One Singapore Experimental). The transmissions could be received as far as Penang, albeit with atmospheric interferences at times. In 1930, Sir Earl from the Singapore Port Authority commenced its short wave broadcast every fortnight either on Sundays or Wednesdays. The Empire Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was inaugurated on 19 December 1932, broadcasting on shortwave and aimed principally at English speakers across the British Empire. In his first Christmas Message (1932), King George V characterised the service as intended for "men and women, so cut off by the snow, the desert, or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them". First hopes for the Empire Service were low. The Director General, Sir John Reith, said in the opening programme:

Don't expect too much in the early days; for some time we shall transmit comparatively simple programmes, to give the best chance of intelligible reception and provide evidence as to the type of material most suitable for the service in each zone. The programmes will neither be very interesting nor very good.

In 1933, Radio ZHI was launched as the first professional shortwave broadcasting station in Singapore. Owned by the Radio Service Company of Malaya, it was a shortwave radio station that delivered static-free broadcasts. Radio ZHI acquired a loyal following in Singapore and abroad. Despite its success, the station closed at the end of December 1936 when its license expired because the British Malaya Broadcasting Corporation was granted the status of having the radio monopoly.

The British Malaya Broadcasting Corporation (BMBC) was created on 12 April 1935 with a nominal capital of $500,000, formed on 21 July 1935 and awarded a broadcasting license by the British crown on 1 June 1936 as a radio network. The station was initially scheduled to start broadcasting in 1935, but was subsequently delayed to 1936 due to initial government uncertainties. The station broadcast from the hill on Thomson Road. ZHL made its first broadcast of Chinese music on 10 June 1936 as an experiment. The BMBC conducted auditions in November 1936. On 1 March 1937 at 6pm, its studios and transmitters at Caldecott Hill were officially opened by Governor of the Straits Settlements Shenton Thomas, aiming at a potential target audience of 10,000 listeners.