More Media Companies Or Less?
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Should we have more Media Companies (newspaper & TV stations, etc) despite both current companies "bleeding" financially? 
My views are:
- I am not sure more(currently there are 2) media companies will benefit the whole of Singaporeans.
- I kinda prefer SPH MediaWorks Channel U Mandarin programmes more. The TV programmes seems more interesting, creative and innovative to me, though I will watch MediaCorp Channel 8 programmes selectively (like Holland V).
- IMO, can see that MediaCorp is starting to be more creative in their Channel 8 programmes due to Channel U competition. Before that, their Channel 8 programmes seem dull and boring to me (I mean most, not all).
- Whatever more or less media companies, I sincerely hope media companies will not resort to charging all Singaporeans(viewers) for their losses/ failure in business model/ failure in management.
- IMO, the introduction of SPH mediaWorks did benefit viewers as long as no addtional charges incurred by the viewers. Really worry that the media companies will pass charges to viewers (like LTA) after hearing SM and MITA speeches on both media companies "bleeding" financially. *touch wood*
I watch Channel U(70%), CNA(15%) & Channel 8(15%).
The above are my opinions and preferrence.
What about you all?
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Whats happening to the media industry is exactly what the government allowed to happen to the Telecom industry. When Singtel was the only telco, it had 100% of the industry in its hands. When competition was allowed in, what happened? M1, within the 1st year, ate up 30% of its market share. Singtel was forced to look overseas to expand its market and it seems to be working with Optus raking in their first profits.
Mediacorp can continue to be king with 100% but with such a small market, it can never truly become a force internationally thus, giving compeition would force them to look wider and farther. This is the same as with all companies who want to survive in the long run.. -
i think these 2 companies need to look overseas to sell their stuff...
which makes the company with U and I channels in a fix.. they have few original titles..
as with almost all companies in singapore, we are a minute market which is oversaturated..
alas..
and to think the powers wanted a 3rd media company...
i wonder what's the push to consolidate now? seems like an about-face from a while ago when the powers seemed very gungho about "competition" even when there cannot be... -
If benefit>cost, I say go ahead.
Not that it will affect me, or will it... -
If the Government allow Private Capital from Private Enterprise to take over the Broadcasting Industry, with MINIMAL RESTRICTIONS, perhaps the ingenuity of Private Enterprise will see the potential that these Government Linked Companies will not see.
Quite a few years back, Singaporean Robert Chow was optimisitc of entering the Singapore broadcasting industry, and this was when SBC had only Channel 5, Channel 8 and Channel 12 to boast of.
However, the Authorities stone walled the effort of an entreprenuer, who made good in Hong Kong, and thought that he could contribute to the Singapore scene when the Government made preliminary announcement of liberalising the broadcasting industry.
It would seem that the liberalising effort was only to the point of redefining the markets into racial or ethnic groups, with separate TV and Radio Channels serving the English, Malay, Chinese and Indian groups, and with added channels serving the discerning audience in varied programmes that range from those entertaining kids, to general interests, and serious financial and updated news.
Ultimately, broadcasting will be an instrument to be held and controlled by the Government, and it will never be allowed to fall into the hands of Private Enterprise.
The same is to be said of the News Print Sector.
This situation is due to the immaturity of the people in Government, with the thought process from a Third World Mind, and living in their dream of a First World. -
At last, some bravado from an otherwise timid Singapore News Reporters.
The following is an article from the Straits Times, 15 November 2003 that will give some food for thought if 'More Media Companies work better than Less'.
MEDIA SLUGFEST:
INSIGHT: Kill or keel over?
When not one but two political leaders this week wondered aloud whether media competition here can be sustained, they caused a stir. Is the market really too small for two players in both print and television? Should it revert to just one player in each medium? What's next for the media scene? TAN TARN HOW, LYDIA LIM and EDNA KOH report
IS THE television market too small for two players? Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew thought so when he commented on the 'haemorrhaging' of the two broadcasters.
He did not think it was possible for MediaCorp and MediaWorks, the broadcasting subsidiary of Singapore Press Holdings, to stop the bleeding (see story below). 'I think both are going to keep on losing,' he said in a television interview this week.
Information, Communications and the Arts Minister Lee Boon Yang was less direct but suggested as much when he said that while the Government favoured competition, 'we are also realistic and if competition does not work, then, well, we have to accept that the market is just too small to accept more than one significant player'.
MediaCorp took the line further in a statement reacting to the ministers and argued that even before the 2000 liberalisation, excess air-time, or unfilled advertising slots, on its Channels 5, 8 and others, showed that the supply for space exceeded demand from advertisers.
But most media analysts and watchers are not persuaded by this argument.
Dismissing it emphatically, analyst Christopher Sanda of securities firm DBS Vickers says: 'MediaCorp is completely wrong.'
Both MediaWorks and MediaCorp are hurting because the rates they charge for advertisements have gone below cost, he says. 'When you do that, whether you are selling cars or watches or nasi lemak, you are going to generate losses.'
Managing director Gan Boon Guan of OMD Singapore, which helps companies place ads, agrees. He reveals that ad rates have gone down by as much as 50 per cent since competition began in 2000, but especially in the last year, when total advertising spending shrank in a shaky economy.
Why this seeming suicide?
Mr Sanda and Mr Gan say it is all about getting market share and wiping out the opposition.
In a game of kill or keel over, losses for a few years matter not as the battle is for the long term.
Being top dog is key because when it comes to television advertising budgets, says Mr Gan, companies think this way: 'I can afford to not use the No. 2 but cannot afford not to go to the leader.'
That Singapore Press Holdings is hugely profitable, he, like many others argue, indicates that the advertising market is big enough for two or even more players, even in television, to aim for a share of it, if not enlarge it.
'The pie for television is an imaginary pie. Both MediaWorks and MediaCorp should be fighting for a bigger share of the total ad pie,' says Mr Gan.
Radio, for example, shows how this can work. Since liberalisation, it has more than doubled its ad market share to 9.3 per cent.
Singapore is very much an anomaly with newspapers getting the lion's share of advertising revenue compared with television, which gets only 30 to 40 per cent. 'In Taiwan and Thailand, for example, television gets over half the pie,' he says.
COMPETITION CAN WORK
ANALYSTS also draw comparisons with the thriving and profitable media markets in small countries and cities in the United States with populations of roughly the same size as Singapore's.
Assistant Professor Mark Cenite of the Nanyang Technological University's school of communication and information, says that in the cities of Denver and Minneapolis - which have television-viewing populations of about three million people each - at least five broadcasters slug it out.
New Zealand is another good example.
Like Singapore, it has a population of about four million people. It supports four major media groups and all are profitable.
The two broadcasters are state-owned TVNZ and Canadian-owned CanWest. In the last financial year, they enjoyed net earnings of NZ$29.1 million (S$31.7 million) and NZ$28.5 million respectively.
And even Uruguay, in South America, has four television stations, one state-owned and three private, though Insight was not able to obtain their earnings figures.
But the Singapore situation has at least one equivalent - Ireland's.
Its first and only commercial free-to-air television station, TV 3, has been in the red since its launch five years ago.
TV 3 says this is because its state-owed rival, RTE, engages in predatory pricing of air-time for commercials, a charge that RTE has denied.
Not everyone agrees that low ad rates is to be blamed for the state of affairs in Singapore.
Some media experts point the finger at management for lacking the creativity and ingenuity to harness the revenue potential of television.
Political analyst and media watcher Seah Chiang Nee believes that part of the reason for the stagnation is that both MediaWorks and MediaCorp's management have failed to seize opportunities: 'The market is not too small if they can produce shows that can also be shown abroad. They need to create new markets.'
Mr Arun Mahizhnan, a media expert and deputy director of think-tank Institute of Policy Studies, agrees: 'The conceptualisation of the market is where the problem is.'
Both are producing the same products and aiming at the same market without sufficient differentiation, he says, noting that the pie usually grows following any case of deregulation, which has not happened here.
The multiple facelifts at MediaWorks' English-language Channel i shows the lack of vision on the part of management, say some watchers.
Political observer Sharon Siddique describes it as 'a lack of vision, a clear idea of what to do'.
'The idea at MediaWorks that you are going to carry newspaper material onto television has not worked out very well, in the sense that print and broadcast journalism are very different and few have straddled that well.'
'The chopping and changing has been costly.'
DIFFICULT TO BE DIFFERENT
MR MAHIZHNAN argues that the so-called liberalisation is, in effect, a very controlled experiment and did not produce real competition.
Both companies are predominant print or broadcaster outfits dabbling in one another's business.
'We should not even have thought of these two media organisations when giving out the new licences, but give them instead to a new company as these two need not be the best,' he says.
Others claim that the stations' financial woes are also due to the strict rules on content, especially for entertainment, that tie the hands of stations in standing out and drawing new audiences.
Mr Seah says: 'Television is more sensitive and conservative; it's 'this cannot, that cannot'. So it's hard to grow.'
Sociologist Chua Beng Huat says competition forces survival via 'differentiating yourself', which means 'escalate the commentaries, keep jazzing up the content'.
'But the Government is afraid of the escalation of competition because in trying to make yourself more readable, you have to be a lot more critical.'
That is what's really behind Dr Lee Boon Yang's warning to the local media that they should not mix comment with news, he says. 'The bleeding stuff was just an excuse' to reiterate media policy in Singapore.
Observers such as Dr Chua say that the restrictions in media policy and laws make it difficult for the media companies to experiment and be creative.
Ms Siddique sums it up: 'In trying to be distinctive, are the OB markers flexible for them to be distinctive? How different can the products be?'
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/singapore/story/0,4386,220081,00.html? -
I think competition is necessary. But not at the way they are competing at the moment. Both media companies are so called 'bleeding', but i think its much better than those days where we could only turn to mediacorp for TV. With the presence of competition, i do see some improvements in the standard of programming. I like the variety now. Media competition is necessary as it spurs competition. And together with the media 21 thingy, where the mda aims to export local productions to other countries, competition will ensure better productions.
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Interesting article from Today - a paper that is not quite avidly picked up every morning.
Big Brother is watching, make no mistake....
Today
October 8, 2003
SINGAPORE
News Comment by Michael Backman
A STONG-WILLED patriarch, a management that is sensitive to criticism and which likes to micro-manage, underlings who will follow and not question, the desire to control and stage-manage everything and a general suspicion of information flow and the media.
This is a description of a typical, traditional Asian family company, but it might also be a description of Singapore. Like the traditional Asian company, the Singapore model is one that used to work. But times have changed and so too must the model.
No longer is manufacturing king. The name of the game these days is information.
Modern, rich countries like the United States, Britain and Australia do not feel the need for an Information Minister whose role, typically, is to constrain information rather than promote it. Yet Singapore has one, which puts it out of step with the world's wealthy, developed countries, a group of which it is a member.
Furthermore, why does the Government still feel the need to license newspapers and other media outlets? Why do editors feel the need to self-censor? Granted, the list of "sensitive" topics appears to have grown shorter. So, why maintain the old fashioned, out-moded trappings of a Third World dictatorship? What does Singapore have to hide?
The answer is nothing. Singaporeans have much to be proud of. They are affluent, well-travelled, well-educated and mature as voters and citizens. I have no doubt that they can handle information and discern between information sources as any American, Australian or Brit is assumed to be able to do.
Yet, no other government whose citizens have a comparable per capita income persists with the sort of media control as does Singapore's.
What Singapore needs is a media that is conducive to the development and exchange of ideas and which provides a venue for debate. By this, I mean debate on matters such as whether Government-linked companies, such as ST Engineering, should be involved in the international arms trade. Or whether Singapore wants Mr Lee Hsien Loong as their next Prime Minister. Or whether the Government is back-peddling on changes to the CPF.
"But Singapore is a small country and can't have such liberalism," is the line. But Denmark is a small country and it has no problem with such debate. "But Singapore is a young country and isn't ready for such media freedom," is another. But Indonesia is a young country and poorly-educated Indonesian maids are trusted more by their government with media freedom than their Singaporean employers.
Another reason for constraints on media freedom is the need to ensure harmony in a multi-racial country. But which country isn't multi- racial these days? Other countries have anti-racial vilification legislation so that newspapers can be prosecuted if they publish material that is demeaning or inflammatory on the basis of race. Such legislation is moderate and effective
The result of the Singaporean mismatch — a free market for goods and services and a near monopoly in the market for ideas — is that Singapore's economy is in danger of going down the drain. Its economy this year will be the worst performing one in Asia in terms of growth.
For too long, civil servants have been allowed to be the main source of ideas. To their credit, their professionalism has got Singapore to where it is. But now, such control threatens Singapore's prosperity.
I accept that the media has become more open in recent years. Today, for example, publishes challenging opinion pieces increasingly of a nature that would have been unthinkable several years ago. But five minutes of sunshine does not make a sunny day.
The Government should abolish the system of annual licensing and editors should have greater independence. Instead, what reforms have been made in the direction of liberalism? Bungee jumping and bar-top dancing.
I was walking along Boat Quay recently and saw four ladies standing on a bar in a pub, each writhing to music in a sexually-suggestive manner. This is not reform. This is not liberalism. This is sleaze. And sleaze should not be equated with freedom. The most important aspect of freedom, which is aligned to the freedom of the media, is the freedom to be wrong. And it's that freedom that Singapore needs to cultivate.
http://www.singapore-window.org/sw03/031008t1.htm