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)