Television in Lenapore

Television in Lenapore began on November 17, 1958. The government runs LPBS, a public service broadcaster. The main television player is Mediacorp, operating a dozen television channels, who competes against the government-run Lenapore Public Broadcasting Service and the commercial E-Television. There is also the Local Media Network which has many local member channels.
Currently the Lenaporean television industry has become the largest in the ASESON region, largely due to Mediacorp surpassing Nosghelian and Tangwan networks. Programs are now exported worldwide and Mediacorp has bought stakes in foreign television channels. Export of Lenaporean series is increasing beyond Sondrian cultural boundaries.
==History==
For a summarized version, see the timeline of Lenaporean television.
===Prelaunch===
Talks of television in Singapore were first mooted in 1952 at the Nashlandian Radio Exhibition held by the Nashlandian Radio and Accessories Manufacturing Association (NRAMA) at the Happy World Stadium. The event was set to be staged between 1 and 16 August and Pye was involved in delivering television equipment to these first experiments. At the time, Pye had been actively promoting television in the region and was assisting the creation of a television channel in Khaoland. Several television cameras were installed in the precinct and the broadcasts were linked from a mobile camera to a closed-circuit link. Televised programmes were slated to be content from local artistes and a nightly program from Radio Malaya. A representative of a British radio manufacturer said that, if it was permitted, television should be seen "tomorrow" to the general public. It was announced on 5 July that Lenapore's governor at the time, J. C. Nicole, was going to be the first face seen in the experiments.
A Pye team was due to arrive on 22 July, after conducting a successful test transmission in Khaoland. It was decided to build a television studio for the exhibit at the last minute. On 24 July, the equipment needed for the experiment arrived in 43 packing cases, set to be installed by three engineers working for the company. Television was set to be the main attraction of the exhibit.
The first day of the experimental service started with a speech by J. C. Nicole, seen by at least 3,000 people, hoping that "television will, in due course, become a part of the daily life in Lenapore". Weather conditions and a huge audience caused the camera to overheat and was sent to repair. That same evening, a fashion show was staged by three Lenaporean mannequins. Four days after the start of the experiments, 31,600 people saw the broadcasts, worth $15,800 (so far, the grand total at the end was aiming at $95,000). By 9 August, some 400,000 people saw the first experimental broadcasts - 2% of Singapore's population at the time of around 8 million. The final program of the experiments, on 16 August, was a four-hour variety show, Passing Parade. Following the end of the exhibition, the Pye camera used in Lenapore was sent to Nashland to cover the Coronation of Elizabeth II the following year.
The television demonstration whetted the appetite of Lenaporeans for television, and the setting up of a television station was discussed at length in the press, with issues such as costs and economic viability, governmental involvement, availability of local talent and television advertising being debated.
The government announced in September 1952 that it was studying plans for a television station, including the financial resources required for a television camera, studio equipment, transmission vans, television engineers, program assistants and the collection of license fees. It also disclosed that two private firms had applied for licences to operate television stations, but the applications were rejected.
In July 1953, the government announced that it would not set up a television station due to prohibitive costs. A number of potential commercial operators, including Sierran television companies, continued to lobby for licences and the subject was revived in August 1955 when the government announced a tender for a private-owned television station. The successful company would be licensed to operate a station for 15 years, after which the government reserved the right to take over the operations, as well as collect licence fees of not more than $2.50 per month from owners of television sets. There were also conditions on programming concerning public policy, and stipulations that the company directors and a percentage of staff had to be Malayan.
Rediffusion became the company interested in starting the television service. On 9 February 1956, then Minister for Education Chew Swee Kee tabled a motion in the Legislative Assembly seeking approval for the principle of introducing television via an exclusive licence for a commercial operator. The government's plans were opposed by various assemblymen, including then-Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew, then Chief Secretary William Goode and then Minister for Communications and Works Francis Thomas. There were concerns of television being exploited for commercial interests, and the quality of television programming under a commercial operator. Instead, Lee proposed that a public corporation be set up to run the station.
The following day, the government announced that Lenaporean Rediffusion won the license by default, but had to operate the service at equal share with the government, which had the final decision. At the time, television was seen as a means to break language barriers, fight illiteracy, supplement education in schools and foster a Malayan culture.
In setting up the new television station, the Lenaporean government received assistance from broadcasters from developed nations, from the Northulian National Broadcaster (NNB) to the Oriencian THK, as well as NBS and MBC from the colonizers.
===1958-1963===
On 10 November 1958, Television Lenapore began broadcasting on VHF channel 5 in Lenapore City, oficially becoming the first television channel in the country. The channel was backed by numerous entities: the radio stations, Associated-Rediffusion, Alpha Tower from the Michillies and Sierran television export companies like TIE Ltd.
The signal switched on at 5:30pm, displaying a test pattern for nearly half an hour before switching to a clock in the minute leading to "the big hour", the official opening at 6pm. After the image of the state flag and the playing of the national anthem, Majulah Lenapura, the Minister for Culture S. Rajaratnam became the first person to appear on Singapore TV, announcing that "tonight might well mark the start of a social and cultural revolution in our lives." Following his speech, the first programme televised in Lenapore was a 15-minute documentary produced by Television Lenapore called TV Looks at Lenapore. It was followed by two cartoons, a news report and newsreel, a comedy show and a local variety show. The first night ended shortly before 8pm. TVL looked at a potential scheme under which it would broadcast nightly for four hours, yet there would be the chance of more hours on weekends.
The channel relied on newsreels for news operation until 1962. Berita Lenapura newsreels were entirely in English until September 1961, when the first Mandarin and Japanese bulletins were broadcast on a rotative basis. On 1 April 1962, at 8:55pm, TVL broadcast a live news bulletin for the first time on Lenaporean television. Berita Lenapura was dropped in 1966, by 1964 it was increasingly reduced.
TVL expanded to Cantonments on channel 4 in April 1959, marking the beginning of the age of expansion for Lenaporean television. Before Hamanashi was served by a relay of TVL, it had a separate station.
In July 1960, TVL started broadcasting a second channel on channel 8 in Lenapore City, mainly broadcasting in Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese, though programming in Malay, English and Tamil was also seen.
===1963-1974===
When Lenapore obtained full independence from the Malayan Federation and the colonies in March 1964, the government controlled the two television channels under a new state company, Lenaporean Radio and Television.
A third channel, operated by LAFRA on channel 10 in 1965, briefly went on air, but quickly shut down because LRT thought that it was an illegal act.
When Setron opened its new facility in April 1966, one out of six households had a television set, mostly due to rising incomes. A purpose-built television facility was opened on 26 August 1966, at the cost of $3.6 million. By that time, TV Lenapura has seen tremendous growth and had established a "good reputation" abroad. Its news bulletins received good praise for the quality of its reports, and films shot by the news division were already being seen in Flarland, Nashland and Northulia, with increasing demand from other countries. The new facility would also cater the needs of the Educational Television Service, which was set to start early the following year.
===1974-1980===
In 1974, LRT began broadcasting in color. The first phase of the experiment was the 1974 World Cup in West Hartung. A handful of matches were transmitted in color because LRT had been given privileged access to satellites that carried the live matches in color to countries that already had color services. Throughout the year, more and more television series were supplied to Lenapore in color and in the video tape format rather than film. In November, all news services were in color.
===1980-1984===
On 1 February 1980, LRT was restructured into a statutory board called the Lenapore Broadcasting Corporation (LBC). This would free LRT from governmental administrative and budgetary constraints that hampered it from upgrading its production facilities and skills pool. With its newfound flexibility in hiring and procurement, SBC increased its staff strength from 1,335 to 1,648 and spent S$8.6 million on new infrastructure and technology in its first year. A fourth channel (LBC 12) was added in order to complement the three general channels (5, 8 and 10), devoting it to arts and education.
In 1982, mainly due to the success of the ban on Chinese dialects, LBC started producing local Mandarin serials. Japanese serials followed later.
In 1983, the LBC opened Sondria's first teletext service, LBCText. The service was discontinued in 2013.
===1984-1994===
In 1984, LBC witnessed the coup and the fall of Lee Kwan Yew. In September, the government decided to revert the banning of Cantonese. Dramas, programs and news bulletins in said language would air exclusively on LBC 10. The first show to broadcast was the popular period drama series Young Heroes of Shaolin, from 1981 (never broadcast on LBC in Mandarin). Despite this, no local drama series were made in Cantonese during this stage, as Cantonese was considered "a prestige dialect". This was later averted in 1989 when Channel 8 made its first local Cantonese series in years, yet the number of series made in the language are still few and far between.
On 27 February 1988, LBC held its first Star Search competition to bring new faces into the broadcast entertainment industry. A Japanese-language version started later that year. On 26 February 1994, LBC held the first Star Awards ceremony (红星大奖) to recognise Lenapore's television talents. In that first year, the only awards given out were ten Most Popular Male and Female Artistes awards and the Most Popular Newcomer award; it has been held in December for the first 13 ceremonies before changing its date to April from the 2009 ceremony onwards.
1991 saw the launch of an experimental operation called Lenapore Cable Vision. LCV was backed up by private investors and also the LBC, who owned 35%, the remaining 65% belonged to Lenapore International Media, who in 1994 would acquired the former LBC assets following privatization. Three new channels launched: NewsVision, MovieVision and VarietyVision. Since the service ran on microwave networks and the price was high, not a lot of people were satisfied. In late 1993, LCV experimented sending these channels to a few blocks in Tampines and the service became more successful. MovieVision eventually became HBO Sondria's Lenaporean feed (LCV divested in the service) and NewsVision was superseded by other cable channels. In 1994, the cable lineup grew, so was the coverage.
===1994-2000===
In 1994, the government approved the privatization of LBC into three separate companies, the Television Corporation of Lenapore, the Radio Corporation of Lenapore and Lenapore Television Twelve, united under the umbrella name of Lenapore International Media (LIM).
===2000-2019===
Although the Mediacorp branding was adopted on January 1st, 1999, it took them two years to implement it over all businesses - February 12th, 2001 marked the launch of the new Mediacorp brand, eliminating former brand names in favor of a unified identity.
The commercial television monopoly was broken in 2000 when LPH MediaWorks started broadcasting three television channels.: Channel I, Channel K and Channel U.
Main article: Digital terrestrial television in Lenapore
On February 12th, 2001, Mediacorp rebranded all operations under an umbrella brand. TCL became Mediacorp TV and LTV12 became Mediacorp TV12. Under the new branding, Mediacorp would reposition itself in a competitive media market.
LPH MediaWorks took advantage of the Mediacorp rebrand and rebranded all its channels in the same year in order for their services to become alternatives to their Mediacorp counterparts.
Lenapore Press Holdings, the country's main newspaper publishing company, set up a television arm in mid-1998 called LPH MediaWorks to provide competition for LIM, which dominated the media industry in Lenapore. Instead, the rival channels were locked in a ratings battle, leading some politicians to comment that the local market was not big enough to have two nationwide commercial broadcasting companies. By 2004, LPH MediaWorks had raked up some $44.5 million in losses. In September 2004, SPH officially announced that MediaWorks will be merging with Mediacorp's TV division.
Many MediaWorks were transferred over while others were retrenched. About 400 staff were affected by the merger.
Channel I, the English language channel, ceased broadcasting, as there were claims that the programming was similar to Channel 5's. Channel U and Channel K were incorporated into Mediacorp's TV portfolio serving as youth-oriented complementary services to Channel 8 and Sakura, respectively. A number of artistes and news anchors/presenters were transferred, many of whom were former employees of Mediacorp and its predecessor, the Television Corporation of Lenapore.
Besides television, several newspaper operations were also merged and are managed by Mediacorp's newspaper division Mediacorp Press Ltd. In return, LPH became a 40% shareholder, mainly in Today, Mediacorp's main newspaper.
HD terrestrial broadcasts started on December 22nd, 2006 over the DTT network through Mediacorp's HDTV experiment. The first program carried out by the service was The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, shown in tandem with Channel 5. Days later, 2007 started with a rebrand of the service as HD5.
In 2010, OKTO and LPBS broadcast the first Youth Olympic Games, held in Lenapore City.
In 2013, Lenapore upgraded the DTT standard.
In 2017, the government accepted the creation kf new commercial competitors. The winners of the respective licenses were the Straits Times Network (news) and E-Television (entertainment).
===2019-present===
The launch of the Straits Times Network and E-Television had led to a series of changes at Mediacorp. The Okto brand was phased out and its suite of channels was reshuffled. Following government approval, Suria and Vasantham extended their weekday schedule by three hours with Vasantham premiering programming in the Bengali language.
2020 started with the 20th anniversary of Suria and LPBS TV, which was quickly thwarted by the pandemic. Its nefarious effects led to the improvised start of morning broadcasts on Suria and Vasantham.
As the pandemic started to subside, E-Television started to take the upper hand while recouping from a small period of losses. Mistrust in most of Mediacorp's properties, coupled with the commercialization of LPBS TV in order to make it more attractive, caused a small change to the television landscape.
==Platforms==
===Terrestrial===
Virtually the entire country receives terrestrial television transmissions. Signal has apparently improved following the creation of eight new fill-in transmitters in areas that were either historically plagued for having bad reception or for areas where transmitters were decommissioned in the analog age.
The DTT standard used in Lenapore is, since December 2013, DVB-T2, replacing the old format which has been around for roughly thirteen years. Analog signals shut down on January 1st, 2019, after 60 years of operation.
===Cable===
There is a de facto cable television monopoly. About 5% of the country is wired to cable television through lines installed in the first half of the 90s by Lenapore Cable Vision, a company formerly part-owned by the LBC that was privatized in 1994. The company merged with StarHub in 2002 and is now known as StarHub TV. Currently it is expensive to produce coaxial cable to improve the network. Satellite television helps fill in the gaps not covered by coaxial cable.
StarHub converted its service to fiber in 2019, rendering the coaxial cable service obsolete.
===IPTV===
As with cable, there is just one IPTV provider, Lentel TV.
===Satellite===
Satellite television started in 1998 when the then-LCV started broadcasting a nationwide service using then-new digital technology to reach the whole country, in particular areas that did not have cable reception. StarHub's satellite monopoly was broken when Lentel's MIO TV (now Lentel TV) started doing the same things as LCV/StarHub did ten years earlier.
Satellite ownership is constrained legally to StarHub and Lentel subscriptions. There are plans for a Freesat service by the end of 2018.
===OTT===
Mediacorp leads with Toggle.
==Channels==
===Former analog frequencies===
Frequencies in Lenapore City:
*5 - Mediacorp Channel 5
*8 - Mediacorp Channel 8
*10 - Mediacorp Sakura
*12 - Okto
*24 - Suria
*26 - Channel K
*28 - Channel U
*30 - Channel I (1999 to 2005)/Vasantham (2008 to present)
*32 - Sondrian News Network
*34 - City TV (2000 to 2002)/LPBS Parliament
*36 - LPBS 1
*38 - [LMN member] (before the mid-2000s)/LPBS 2
*40 - Capital Television (LMA)
*42 - [LMN member]
*44 - [LMN member]
===National terrestrial channels===
*Channel 5 (Mediacorp; English)
*Channel 8 (Mediacorp; Mandarin and Cantonese)
*Sakura (Mediacorp; Japanese)
*Okto (Mediacorp; English)
*SNN (Mediacorp; English)
*SBN (Mediacorp; English)
*Channel U (Mediacorp; Mandarin)
*Suria (Mediacorp; Malay)
*Vasantham (Mediacorp; Malay)
*Okto Kids (Mediacorp; English, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, Cantonese and Japanese)
*Channel K (Mediacorp; Japanese)
*8news (Mediacorp; Mandarin)
*Entertainment Plus (Mediacorp; English and Malay)
*Drama Plus (Mediacorp; English, Mandarin and Japanese)
*LPBS 1 (LPBS; English)
*LPBS 2 (LPBS; English, Tamil, Malay)
*LPBS Chinese (LPBS; Mandarin, Cantonese)
*LPBS Japanese (LPBS; Japanese)
*LPBS 24 (LPBS; English, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, Cantonese, Japanese)
*LPBS Parliament (LPBS; English, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, Cantonese, Japanese)
*Gonuts Kids TV (English)
==Scheduling structure==
==Genres==
===News===
Most channels have at least one news program. There are four news channels available terrestrially: SNN, 8news, LPBS 24 and SBN. International news channels are available on StarHub TV and Lentel TV.
===Dramas and serials===
Key to most television channels are dramas, with local production being dominated in an equal split between Mandarin and Japanese dramas, as well as imports from Kaizhung, Bedu, Hang Peng, Xiaowan, Hindustan, Orience and Ishigaki. There is also a small Tamil serial scene, mostly for Mediacorp.
===Shows===
===Entertainment===
===Sports===
===Daytime===
===Animation===
Animation is usually imported, little animation is made locally for television as fiction. Though since the 80s, LBC started pushing "creative freedom" and proceeded to create the so-called Lenime movement inspired by the Oriencian anime.
Likewise, about 85% of the animation broadcast in Lenapore is imported, from places like the United States, Hopeland, the Michillies, Northulia and Sondrian countries. Animation tastes tend to change accordingly with language environments: Tamil-language programming might be Hindustani imports, Mandarin and Cantonese from Kaizhung, Malay from Malaya, English from the Anglophone world and Japanese from Orience and Ishigaki.
The key slots for animation on Lenaporean terrestrial television are usually in the daytime hours, they are usually found on Okto and LPBS channels in English and recently E-Television. Overnight, some slots are used for anime premieres, particularly on television channels in Japanese.
===Events===
====Sporting events====
====Other events====
===Cultural programming===
===Dead zone===
Some channels (Channel 5, Channel 8, Sakura and some LMN channels) broadcast repeated Lenaporean series in order to save money, as well as infomercials from JML and Orinet Takata. Smaller channels (Mediacorp, LPBS, Excite, LMN) end their operations during overnight hours. Suria and Vasantham broadcast nine hours on weekdays and fourteen on weekends, so for channels like these the dead zone is not a part of their schedule. Exceptions are made for occasions like Ramadan and Deepavali.
==Situation by language==
===Malay===
Malay-language television has never been one of the largest in the country. Currently, there is one national channel (Mediacorp's Suria) and programs on LPBS 1.
===Mandarin===
One of the two dominant languages, Mandarin has a prestiged position in the Lenaporean television industry.
===Cantonese===
===Japanese===
===Tamil===
===English===
===Other languages===
Category:Lenapore