Media news (episode 19)

Welcome to this week's media news.

Four Asean countries have agreed to set aside TV broadcasting airwaves for 4G mobile broadband. The countries are Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia. This was announced by  the Minister for Communications and Information of Singapore, Yaacob Ibrahim at the opening of the week-long Infocomm Media Business Exchange 2013 (imbX) event. (The Straits Times via Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union on 19.6.2013)

Media Prima 
On the afternoon of June 29, an ex-TV3 staff reunion ceremony was held at Zam Zam Cafe and Satay Club in Petaling Jaya. The ex-TV3 staffs who came to the ceremony were Tan Sri Mohd Desa Pachi and Christine Ling. The ex-TV3 staffs contacted together through Facebook. The event was reported on Buletin Utama later in the evening. Also, Buletin Utama's ending on the same day was just a shot of Buletin Utama's studio desk instead of the usual recorded special images of the day's event which was reported on the programme.

Recently I observed TV3 starting to do sponsorship bumpers that air before and after each programme, mostly at primetime. The sponsor is Nestle with its products such as Milo and Nestle.

About TV3's primetime schedule changes that I mentioned last week, according to General Manager of TV3 and TV9 Sherina Mohamed Nordin in a press release made by TV3, the changes were made to allow TV3 to remain as the number one TV channel and the most-watched TV channel. The reasons why TV3 had to make the change is because viewers were familiar with the airtime and the programme associated, such as Majalah 3 on Saturday and the Aksi drama block on Monday. In the new schedule, for example, TV3 wants to air entertainment programmes on weekends as it is usually the family leisure time with programmes such as Tunggu Sekejap and dramedy programmes. This was based on a detailed survey based on the viewers' preferences.

TV3's primetime schedule changes means that TV9 also has minor changes in its primetime schedule for Monday to Wednesday. Skrin di 9 moved to Monday from Wednesday and Ratu and Chamsarang changed from Monday and Tuesday to Tuesday to Wednesday. Airtime does not change.

The Phat Fabes and Ben Show, a talk show which presented by Fly FM deejays Phat Fabes and Ben, airs on both 8TV and NTV7. It was recorded at somewhere near Jalan P Ramlee in Kuala Lumpur. 

Astro  
This week I saw ITV Choice on channel 735 (the channel that airs programmes from ITV in the UK and airs in 4:3 format upconverted from HD) switched from being free-to-view to only available for Metro pack subscribers. This is probably because Astro does not want the Metro pack to have less than three channels and wants another channel to fill the gap. Channel 731 that was occupied by Bio is now gone and no longer seen, as previously reported. I also observed that Media Prima's TV channels' video signals on Astro have improved.

TV Alhijrah
I sometimes watch Berita Ringkas Alhijrah which airs at 6:00 pm where during news reports about accidents, it will show a computer animated reconstruction, but I'm not really sure whether the animated reconstruction was made by the news agency that provide the news if an accident occured overseas or TV Alhijrah itself. Probably made by TV Alhijrah.

(Revised on July 7)