Friday 31 May 2013

The social messenger hype generation

Recently many new TV advertisements for instant messaging services on mobile apps came out. They came out like wildfires. First was WeChat, then came Line. Now I can also see Kakao Talk with K-POP boy band Big Bang as ambassadors. Other instant messaging services that I know but I don't see them on TV advertisements include Whats App, Blackberry Messenger and Google+ Hangouts. Advertisements like these came out like wildfires in order for smart phone users to use them more often than normal voice calls and many of the young generation are using them so I call it as "the social messenger hype generation". In the previous decade, instant messaging services were just on computers connected with the internet only. They are Yahoo Messenger and Skype.

Thursday 30 May 2013

Last week and this week's media news (episode 15)

Welcome to the media news. I've merged last week and this week's media news into one because last week I didn't post the last week's media news because I was busy surfing the internet during the recent school holidays and also going out to Sunway Lagoon last Saturday. Last week was Bernama's 45th anniversary celebration, TV3 with auditions for new hosts of 3R, TV2 with the start of airing Running Man. This week is just the Astro Awani app. If I have more news about the local media scene for the remainder of this week, I will post here. I'd like to remind that "media news" on my blog concentrates on the local media scene especially on TV and radio broadcasting.

LAST WEEK

Bernama celebrated its 45th anniversary on May 20. Bernama TV aired its special documentary on its anniversary on May 23. The documentary also included a footage from the Filem Negara about Bernama's establishment in 1968. Bernama started its operation at a bungalow located at Jalan Pekeliling Kuala Lumpur on 20.5.1968.The first logo used at that time was Bernama written in all lowercased letters.
Several mentions in the documentray were the Jabatan Pengarang where its board of directors work, the Centre for Excellence (its training centre), the Photo Unit which was established in 1980, the Infolib which is located in the 8th floor of Wisma Bernama, the Bernama Library and Infolink Service website, the Media Relations and Event Management department and its subsidiary BESSAR which concentrates on ICT technology. Also mentioned in the documentary are the Bernama portal which now has its new look with the introduction of the Breaking News section and Persepctives on Current Issues section.

Bernama TV and Radio 24 also got their mentions. Bernama TV broadcasts from the 3rd floor and Radio 24 broadcasts from the 15th floor; both from Wisma Bernama. Radio 24 now broadcasts to Johor Bahru on 107.5 Mhz since 20.2.2012. Helo Malaysia on Bernama TV now has the Tamil and Mandarin editions which broadcasts on Saturday and Sunday at 10:30 pm respectively.

TV3 began airing short advertisements on auditions searching for new hosts of 3R, a young women magazine programme that first aired in 2000. The audition searches for people between age 18 and 26 who would like to become the three future hosts of 3R in a reality programme called Projek 3R which will air in August before the new season starts on October 20. Auditions will be held at USM Penang, UiTM Shah Alam and at SSTwo Mall in May and June. The second is for UiTM students only while the others are for the public. 3R is initiated by Datuk Marina Mahathir and is produced by Red Communications Sdn Bhd. The previous hosts of the original run were Azah Yazmin Yusof, Rafidah Abdullah and Low Ngai Yuen. It has been aired for over 14 seasons and 182 episodes. The official website is http://www.3r.com.my/

TV2 will air the Korean variety programme Running Man starting June 1 every Saturday at 4:00 pm. For the first episode of Running Man broadcast on TV2, TV2 will run a snap a photo contest where a viewer needs to take a self picture with the background of any scene or segment of the programme with the TV2 logo on the top-right of the screen in a creative way and send to TV2's Facebook page with the viewer's Facebook name tag. Forty winners will be chosen and will be able to go to the Running Man Sparta Kim Jong Kook First Malaysia Showcase which will be held at HGH Sentul on June 14. Running Man has been first aired on SET ONE HD Astro ch 393.

THIS WEEK

Astro Awani has recently introduced its own app after the 13th General Election. The app, which is available on Android and iOS has news reports in Malay and English, videos and  live streaming of its channel (penstriman TV langsung). It can be accessed at http://www.astroawani.com/apps.

On May 31 at 9:00 pm, many TV stations carried the speech from the Yang di-Pertuan Agong commemorating his birthday for 10 minutes. The speech was produced by RTM. This also amazingly include Hypp TV's Emas ch 112 and EC Inspirasi ch 111, which was carried without any station logo (EC Inspirasi just with the transparent Hypp TV logo), when I checked their catch-up TV the next day. The picture below are screencaps of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong's speech commemorating his birthday as broadcast on TV9.
A Malay telemovie which is aimed at children called Coklat Marathon, aired on TV3 on June 1 at 11:30 am. The telemovie is produced by Orangetree Productions. The telemovie's name is not related to Vanila Coklat, a drama which was aired on TV3 in 2012. (Update 14/6/2013) It is revealed that Coklat Marathon was part of TV3's Father's Day's series of movies and telemovie called "Sayang Papa". TV3 rarely aired any telemovies aimed at children until this was aired. Astro Ceria has also started airing telemovies aimed at children regularly (mostly new ones) and airing local movies since late 2012. 

On June 1, TV9's top-right logo changed contrast from being almost transparent into full contrast. Might be because of failure on the Versus final information bar located below the programme name at the top-left few days before this picture was taken.
This is how TV3's Buletin 1:30 set looks like after the 13th General Election, captured on June 1. It seems that Buletin 1:30 wants to remain the camera in position to the newsreader. The newsreader changes her standing position during the world news, sports news and at the end of Buletin 1:30. Previously they also had another camera placed further from the newsreader and shows the whole set.

(Updated June 1 and 14)

Monday 27 May 2013

Post GE 13 events

This is a summary of events happening after the 13th General Election.

6 May: Prime Minister sworn in before the Yang di-Pertuan Agong for his second term as the Prime Minister on at 4:00 pm after Barisan Nasional won a majority in the general election
15 May: New cabinet announced by the Prime Minister at 5:00 pm
16 May: New cabinet ministers take the oath before the Yang di-Pertuan Agong in the morning
22 May: GE 13 results gazetted (Source: Bernama via The Star)
24 May: Election Commission wants to start a study on the redelineation of electoral consistuencies in accordance with Article 113 (2) (ii) of the Federal Constitution. The study takes place once every 8 years. The current one will be made after suspended for 2 years since 2011. The last one was made in 2003. (Source: Bernama via The Star)
24 June: First meeting of the first session of the 13th Parliament where the parliament is scheduled for 16 days (Source: Bernama via The Star)
25 June: Official opening of the Parliament by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong at 10:00 am; Dewan Negara meet for nine days beginning this date (Source: Bernama via The Star)

Revised on May 30

Sunday 26 May 2013

Empty studio and camera at the end of Buletin Pagi (26.5.2013)

Screenshot from Tonton TV Live streaming and edited using Paint.
Studio camera

Whole set of Buletin Pagi; background is a city might be at night or early morning before sunrise. I think TV3's background is so confusing despite Buletin Pagi being broadcast when the sun is rising!


Sunday 19 May 2013

This week's media news (episode 14)

Welcome to this week's media news.

On May 15, Najib Razak, the Prime Minister announced the new Cabinet after the 13th General Election at 5:00 pm. Previously the Prime Minister was sworn in before the Yang di-Pertuan Agong for his second term as the Prime Minister on 6 May at 4:00 pm after Barisan Nasional won a majority in the general election.

The new cabinet announcement saw many changes, such a lineup of new ministers and some ministry changes. Many TV stations carried the announcement. RTM through TV1 provided the visuals of the announcement broadcast. TV1 airs it during Berita Wilayah; TV3 interrupted regular programming for a special news broadcast presented by Izwan Azir Salleh from the near-the-newsroom studio where he talks about the new cabinet; NTV7, 8TV, TV9, TV Alhijrah and Bernama TV (which relays off-air from TV1 Astro ch101 feed) simply interrupted regular programming only for the speech portion. The next day in the morning, the new cabinet ministers take the oath before the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, where the event was also carried live on most TV stations.

Harian Metro made an advertisement this week which airs on Media Prima TV stations which says the newspaper had sold over 602,005 copies for the edition dated May 6.

Planet Kiara, a children's science-fiction drama series which has completed season 1 with 13 episodes, is now re-running on TV3 since May 14. It airs every Tuesday to Thursday at 6:30 pm.

Media Prima Digital, Media Prima's digital media company, has recently introduced Tonton app for Samsung Smart TV users, New Straits Times says. The application can be downloaded from the Samsung Smart TV app store.

I've changed the design of my blog

This morning I went to the Blog Template Designer and made some changes to my blog. I suddenly made up my mind to change my blog design as I promised in my blog's 1st anniversary blog post. I choose which one suits best for my blog.

The background picture is a picture of clouds by Airyelf. The page text font has been changed to Georgia. The text colour has also changed to some bluish ones to match the background picture.

What I'm planning next is to have change the format of "This week's media news". The "This week's media news" which has been a regular in my blog right now is a compilation of media news that happened around me concentrating specifically on Malaysia, my homeland and broadcasting, using the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union's news feed, reports from major newspapers and from my recent experiences while watching TV. It is done every week and the each weekly posts are called as "episodes". I started this accidentally in January when I received three interesting news about the media. For the change I'll just think and plan it by myself. Maybe I'll change it next week.

I'm also planning to improve the quality of my writing in my blog. I plan to add more posts in the future when I can. 

Yesterday I've added backlinks on my blog after reading an article about trackback on Wikipedia. The backlink is to track which website links either one of my posts in my blog.

Saturday 18 May 2013

Foreign-produced programmes on TV Alhijrah (in May 2013)

These are the foreign-produced programmes that are airing on TV Alhijrah that I know. All of these are aired with Malay subtitles.
  • Pride and Love - Turkish drama, TV Alhijrah calls this drama as a "Middle East drama", runs for 69 episodes according to TV Alhijrah monthly program schedule for June 2013 at brandequity.com.my, TV Alhijrah's ad spots agent (airs Mon-Thu 1:30 pm)
  • Antiques Roadshow - British TV programme on antiques, produced by the BBC (airs Saturday 11:30 pm
  • Cloud Bread - Korean animated series which has been aired on KBS World in Korean with English subtitles; on TV Alhijrah it airs using the English version
(Updated May 19 and 24)

Saturday 11 May 2013

Wan Zaleha Radzi hosts Islam Today on RTM TVi

I have spotted a programme airing on RTM TVi through its Facebook page (RTM TVi's Facebook page often post highlights of its programmes). It is called Islam Today and has been aired since May 3. It is hosted by Wan Zaleha Radzi who was previously with TV3. It airs every Friday at 1:00 pm.

Friday 10 May 2013

This week's media news (episode 13)

Welcome to this week's media news.

This one has to do with audio balancing on Astro's TV channels. In an ABU news report on May 3, Astro has appointed Salzbrenner Stagetec Media Academy as consultants to support their switch from "level-based loudness management" to "loudness metering" based on the ITU 1770 standard for its pay-TV channels.

Stagetec.com says by switching to loudness metering and processing Measat aims to deliver a uniform, high-quality sound experience throughout all of Astro's channels.

Since 2010 Astro has been equipped with Stagetec Nexus audio routing systems and Aurus consoles that offer native loudness metering as well as support for third-party solutions such as Pinguin LndServer.

A first round of training and consultancy was held in March 2013 and led by loudness expert Jean-Paul Moerman from the Mediagroup headquarters in Buttenheim, Germany. For a week, Jean-Paul together with the Astro Audio Committee imparted theoretical and practical knowledge to all audio staff members in all areas of the Astro campus including studio production, MCR, transmission and post-production.

If you really want to know what happened behind-the-scene on the preparation for the recent GE 13 results TV broadcasts, The Star has published two features on its last Sunday's edition. One is about TV presenters facing challenges on making the news about election and another is about the highlights of last Sunday's GE 13 election results TV programmes.

This week was also exciting because I spotted Media Prima TV channels inviting back some former TV3 personalities for a while. Aziz Desa who had previously presented Malaysia Hari Ini in the 1990s returned for Nasi Lemak Kopi O on TV9 last Saturday. On Sunday, Zainal Ariffin (still working with Media Prima) with another one presented the GE 13 results programme on TV9 while Raymond Goh, who ocassionally presents TV3's Nightline appeared as one of the presenters of NTV7's GE 13 results programme. On Tuesday, Christine Ling who was previously with TV3 in its early years appeared in an episode of Santai Bersama on TV3 at 11:30 am.

Moving on to TV presentation. On May 5, I saw TV3's on-screen logo variation being shrinked from big sized to smaller sized as small as TV3's main on-screen logo. On May 11, I saw the addition of TV3's slogan Inspirasi Hatiku below TV3's logo at the middle of Buletin Utama's desk. I think this is a minor change after the recent GE 13. Studio A Sri Pentas was reserved for GE 13 coverage for two weeks until May 5 while TV3's news bulletins moved to near-the-newsroom studio and newsroom studio.

On the morning of May 11 while checking on Tanyalah Ustaz live programme via Tonton TV streaming, I saw the programme having a right-side bar showing off viewers' questions and the guest presenter's answers about the programme's topic of the day through a special website on http://apps.tv9.com.my/tanyalahustaz/. Tanyalah Ustaz is shown as a live broadcast every Friday to Sunday at 7:00 am.

(Revised on May 11 and 12)

Sunday 5 May 2013

TV coverage of GE 13 polling day

Today is the GE 13 polling day. Many TV stations and media companies are busy doing coverage of the GE 13. Journalists are posted at most polling centres around the country to provide coverage on the polling day events from the polling period to the results.

TV1 and TV3 air hourly news updates on the election by calling its journalists who are at polling centres. TV9 did the same as other stations by airing "Berita TV9 Detik ini", but these updates air irregularly (closer to the first commercial break of the programme) unlike others. TV9's "Detik ini" brand is rarely used and is used only for breaking news. NTV7 on the other hand prefers updates direct from its reporters instead of being guided by presenters in the studio like other stations did. Meanwhile NTV7's Mandarin news, 8TV and China Press newspaper together give coverage on the election in Mandarin through 8TV's election results programme in the evening.

Astro Awani airs updates on the polling day from Studio 1 Astro Bukit Jalil instead of from its regular production centre at Bukit Kewangan Kuala Lumpur. It even launched its very own GE 13 app for iOS and Android.

A majority of TV stations will start airing election results. Astro Awani will start at 5:00 pm with news and analysis and also an English news programme at 12:00 am-1:30 am; TV1 at 6:00 pm; TV3 in Malay and NTV7 in English will start at 6:00 pm; Astro AEC with Polling Night, Astro Vaanavil with Thertal and 8TV in Mandarin will start at 7:00 pm, TV9 at 8:00 pm; TV Alhijrah at 8:30 pm and Bernama TV at 9:30 pm.

Saturday 4 May 2013

This week's media news (episode 12)

Welcome to this week's media news. We've come to the month of May.

When I checked TV9 on May 2, I found out that TV9 has fully stopped using the old "now, next" information. The last time they use was only during children's programmes. It now fully uses the generic rollercoaster design same as the other programmes not part of the regular TV9 programme block. (Updated 5/5/2013)

I've found an RTM website which is related to its TV library. RTM has stored an online catalogue of its in-house programmes in a website called Pusat Sumber Penyiaran Jabatan Penyiaran Malaysia (Broadcasting Resource Centre of the Department of Broadcasting Malaysia). This is where you can find a list of in-house programmes that has been aired on RTM and also some old ones. This website uses the WebOPAC searching system. The website is http://psp.rtm.gov.my

You might remember that I had reported about RTM's online rolling news channel 1News last month. Also around the RTM website, I've found a news article from Utusan Malaysia about the launch of 1News at Taylor's University in Subang Jaya on April 18. The Secretary-General of Broadcasting Datuk Seri Kamaruddin Siaraf says 1News is a new source to send information to the people through the internet. The launch of the channel (known as portal) enables RTM to be relevant to the current events and also attract the young people. For the first phase of the channel, it will broadcast from 9:00 am to 10:00 pm with its content repeated every four hours. It also airs 5-minute news summaries and the unedited recording of press conferences. 1News will be in full operation this August. The introduction of the channel will enable RTM to launch a full-HD news channel in 2015.

NEW 5/5/2013: TV coverage of GE 13 polling day

Friday 3 May 2013

Fujiko anime currently airing in Malaysia (as of May 2013)

This is a list of Fujiko anime which is currently airing in Malaysia as of May 2013, compiled by myself. "Fujiko anime" refers to any anime that is based on either Fujiko F. Fujio or Fujiko Fujio A's works (eg. Doraemon and Ninja Hattori-kun). This is an update of one made in November 2012.

This post will discuss which episode position the programmes air as at time of writing.

FUJIKO F. FUJIO
1. Doraemon (NTV7, Sat 7:30 pm) - current episode position is episodes from the first airing in Japan in April and May 2006 through episode re-run since May 2012 (original run was May 2011-May 2012)
2. Kiteretsu (TV3, Mon 6:30 pm) - currently re-running episodes from Summer 1994 period since April 15. Last current run episode which is from Autumn 1995 aired on April 8.
3. Chimpui (Disney Channel Asia Astro Ch 615, has moved to Mon-Fri 8:30 am as of 4/5/2013 according to new promo aired)
4. Mojacko (Cartoon Network Asia Ch 616, Sat 9:00 am)

FUJIKO FUJIO A
1. Ninja Hattori-kun (Astro Ceria) - originally aired on NTV7 between 2006 and 2009. The original dubbed audio track is still present when it is airing on Astro Ceria.
2. Monster Kid (Astro Ceria) - also known as Kaibutsu-kun in Japan. In TV9 it airs as "Monster Kids" and was aired between 2009 and 2011. The original dubbed audio track is still present when it is airing on Astro Ceria.

NO LONGER AIRING
 1. Perman (TV9) - Last known episode aired on January 4.

List of seasons in Sinaran Pasport Kegemilangan TV3

This is a list of seasons in Sinaran Pasport Kegemilangan, a talent show that was aired on TV3 between 1994 and 2002. I made this by myself by surfing through Melodi episodes on Emas Hypp TV ch 104 and my experiences.

1994: Season 1
1995: Season 2
1996: Season 3
1997: Season 4
1997-98: Season 5
1998: Season 6
1998-99: Season 7
1999-2000: Season 8 (known as Sinaran 2000)
2001: Sinaran Pertiwi (patriotic-themed)
2002: Season 10