TV channels Singapore

Television in Singapore is anchored by Mediacorp, the national media group owned by the state investment company Temasek Holdings, whose channels stand alongside international news, business and movie brands - and whose cameras follow every National Day Parade and every general election night.

From the 1952 exhibition to Mediacorp

Singapore first glimpsed television through experimental closed-circuit broadcasts at the British Radio Exhibition of August 1952, and the government soon rejected private bids in favour of a public service. Television began in Singapore on 15 February 1963, when Television Singapura started regular broadcasts with two channels: Channel 5 carrying English and Malay programmes, and Channel 8 carrying Chinese and Tamil ones. Colour arrived in 1974, the football World Cup final providing the first live colour broadcast. The service passed from Radio Television Singapore to the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation in 1980, was privatised in 1994 and renamed MediaCorp in 1999. Analogue signals fell silent on 2 January 2019.

The Mediacorp networks

Channel 5 remains the English-language general channel, Channel 8 the Chinese-language flagship, and Channel U the Chinese service aimed at younger viewers - a station launched by the publisher SPH MediaWorks in 2001 and folded into MediaCorp in 2004. The group's streaming side is represented by meWATCH LIVE 1, part of the meWATCH platform that began life as Toggle in 2013. Pay television reaches homes through StarHub TV, whose cable network dates from 1992, and through Singtel TV, an internet television service launched in 2007; private satellite dishes have long been prohibited in the city-state.

News from an Asian perspective

CNA - Channel NewsAsia, launched on 1 March 1999 - reports Asian and world news from an explicitly Asian point of view, CNA International carries the service abroad, and CNA Originals is its documentary strand. Business coverage comes from CNBC Asia HD: the regional franchise of the international business brand has been based in Singapore since 1998, when it absorbed the rival Asia Business News.

Kids and movies

Children have Cartoonito Asia and ZooMoo, films come from HITS Movies - a channel launched in 2018 by Rewind Networks, a Singaporean company - and KCM India brings Indian programming to the mix. From the first evening bulletin of 1963 to today's streaming platforms, Singapore's television remains compact, multilingual and national in scope.