BACK TO SQUARE ONE

The biggest news regarding the media itself this year must be the fact that we are now back to square one four years ago. Mediacorp TV and Mediaworks would merge to become one entity again, after their 4 years of destructive competition. Well, the first thing that came to my mind when I finished reading the article is that, those Channel U artistes must be feeling damned demoralized. They left Mediacorp to this "brave new world" fought hard to establish Channel U as a good alternative to Channel 8 and I would say that they did pretty well and now they have to troop back to the company that has over the years used every opportunity to condemn them with their tails down.

The current arrangement is that Channel U will continue its run, which I hope will continue to be the state of things in the long run. From what I see, it is a great pity to kill off Channel U. Channel U has certain apparent strengths over Channel 8. They have better newscasters and also better TV hosts, especially for those "in the street programmes". Their commentary programmes are also better in the sense that they discuss on sensitive issues compared to their Channel 8 counterparts. I suspect that is because Channel 8 being more established has a more cozy relationship with the authorities and might even be more dependent on "lobang" from them. And of course not forgetting that Channel U show more TVB series which even the mediocre ones are better than the good ones of Channel 8 local series. Alright, so Channel U has even worse local series than Channel 8 but they are few in quantity so Channel U has to fill the rest of the air time with TVB series which is good. At least unlike Channel 8, they don't try to pretend that their own series are better than the ones from Hong Kong. So, another extra point to them for knowing their own limits.

Regarding Mediacorp, a friend of mine, only recently has a very interesting point to make. We all know that if you want to watch variety shows, you should watch Taiwanese ones, if you want to watch drama series, go for Hong Kong's ones. So you see, Taiwan and Hong Kong have established their own niches for TV programmes. Now, what is Singapore's niche in TV? Those never-ending circus-like charity programmes that are constantly trying to outdo each other in raking in more funds and in more death defying stunts? Buck up Mediacorp!