Mediacorp

1936–1961: Beginnings in radio

Mediacorp was initially founded as the British Malaya Broadcasting Corporation, which was awarded a broadcasting license by the British crown in 1936. One year later, in 1937, the company officially opened its studios and transmitters at Caldecott Hill. The corporation was taken over by the Straits Settlement government in 1940 as a part of the British Department of Information, known back then as the Malaya Broadcasting Corporation. On the basis of the Radio Malaya broadcasters that moved to Kuala Lumpur in 1958, Radio Singapore took over the year after as the State radio service, with 3 radio stations (each airing in English, Mandarin and Malay).

Shortly after Singapore reached self-government status in 1959, there were plans to obtain television transmission rights. This manifested the founding of Television Singapura in 4 April 1961. Television Singapura started test broadcasts from 21 January to 15 February 1963, when it was officially launched as the first television station in Singapore. From 3 April, it regularly broadcast in English and Malay. On 23 November of the same year, a second channel was launched as Channel 8, airing mainly in Mandarin and Tamil.

Meanwhile, in Kuala Lumpur, Talivishen Malaysia (new Malay orthography: Televisyen Malaysia) began broadcasting on 28 December in time for the New Year celebrations. Television Singapura was subsequently rebranded as sister channel "Television Malaysia (Singapura)" to coincide with the formation of Malaysia in September of that year. The first advertisement was aired on 1 January 1964 to reduce the station's reliance on government funding.

1965–1980: Radio Television Singapore

After the separation of Singapore from the Malaysian federation, all of the Malaysian television and radio operations in Singapore were joined together to become the Radio and Television of Singapore (RTS). RTS was officially dissolved in 31 January 1980 and its assets transferred to the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation.

1980–1994: Singapore Broadcasting Corporation

On 31 January 1984, SBC started broadcasting on channel 12. It also launched two radio stations: "Perfect 10" and "YES", the latter airing Mandarin music. SBC began stereo broadcasting on its television channels on 1 August 1990.

An educational programming block known as CDIS began airing on channel 12 on 4 January 1993. On 1 February of the same year, SBC celebrated its 30 years of television broadcasting. On 7 June, channel 8 expanded its airtime on weekdays, from 3:00 pm until closedown. On 1 December, SBC launched a satellite television network named Singapore International Television (SITV).

1994–1999: Privatisation

On 1 October 1994, SBC was privatised into a new holding group called the Singapore International Media Company Group (SIM), divided into three divisions: Television Corporation of Singapore (TCS), Radio Corporation of Singapore (RCS) and Singapore Television Twelve (STV12).

Channel 8 began airing 24 hours a day on 1 September 1995. On the same day, STV12 renamed channel 12 as Prime 12, which was focused on multilingual programming in Malay, Tamil, English, and foreign languages; also, it launched a new channel called Premiere 12, which was centred in niche programming such as sports, arts, culture, documentaries and kids' series. Whilst, channel 8 switched its programming to a Mandarin language-oriented one. At the same time, all Tamil programming was moved to Prime 12. Channel 5 became the second TV channel broadcast 24 hours a day, starting from 29 September 1995.

TCS launched its own film production studio Raintree Pictures^[3] on 1 August 1998. Singapore International Media (SIM) was shut down on 1 January 1999 and replaced by Media Corporation of Singapore, or MediaCorp for short.

1999–2008: Media Corporation of Singapore

On 1 March 1999, Mediacorp launched Channel NewsAsia (CNA) as its first news network, broadcasting as a analogue, free-to-air channel.

On 30 January 2000 Prime 12 and Premiere 12 were renamed Suria and Central, respectively. Suria became a Malay-language channel while Central was divided into three timeshared networks. SportCity, a sports channel, was also launched on the same year.

Mediacorp's television monopoly was broken in 6 May 2001 when Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) was given a television broadcasting licence, resulting in the founding of SPH MediaWorks. MediaWorks launched two channels: the Chinese-language Channel U and English-language TV Works, which was later renamed to Channel i. At the same time, MediaCorp was granted the license to distribute the daily tabloid Today. To stop further economic losses due to competition with each other, SPH agreed to be merged with Mediacorp on 17 September 2004. It was legally completed on 31 December of that year, creating the new holding company MediaCorp Television Broadcasting Arm, which would manage and operate the remaining channels. Channel i was later closed down due to low ratings.

On 1 January 2007, HD5 was launched and Channel 5 became the first DTT station in Singapore to broadcast in HD. MediaCorp also launched MOBTV, an online television service. Its radio division was forced to block users from the United States due to royalty rates imposed by the US Copyright Royalty Board.

On 19 October 2008, Central's three timeshared networks were divided into two independent channels: the kids and arts programming blocks were replaced by Okto, whilst Vasantham took over the Vasantham Central block.

2008–present: Broadcasting on DTT

Channel NewsAsia was launched on 21 January 2013.^[4] On 30 September, Mediacorp shut down its Teletext service,^[5] whist on 16 December, all MediaCorp free-to-air channels on DTT were upgraded to DVB-T2.^[6]

On May 2015, Okto and CNA started airing in HD. On 8 December, Mediacorp opened its new offices in Buona Vista.^[7][8]