Mediacorp Pte. Ltd.

Who owns Mediacorp?
Mediacorp is wholly owned by Temasek Holdings, the investment company of the Singapore government, which is in turn wholly owned by the Minister for Finance.

Is Mediacorp government owned?
Yes, in substance. It is a private limited company by legal form but is 100 percent held by state investor Temasek and receives public service broadcasting funding approved by Parliament.

What channels does Mediacorp own?
It operates six free-to-air TV channels (Channel 5, Channel 8, Channel U, Suria, Vasantham and CNA), 11 FM radio stations, the meWATCH and meLISTEN streaming platforms, and digital news services including CNA and 8days.

When was Mediacorp founded?
Broadcasting under its lineage began on 1 June 1936. The current company emerged from the 1994 corporatization of Singapore Broadcasting Corporation and adopted the Mediacorp name in 1999.

Is Mediacorp publicly traded?
No. It is a private limited company with a single shareholder, Temasek Holdings, and has never been listed.

Who is the CEO of Mediacorp?
Tham Loke Kheng has been chief executive since 2017. Niam Chiang Meng has chaired the board since 2018.

Did Mediacorp lay off staff recently?
Yes. In September 2025 the company made 93 positions redundant, slightly over 3 percent of its workforce, citing the shift toward short-form digital content and economic uncertainty.

Broadcasting in Singapore began in 1936 when the British Malaya Broadcasting Corporation started radio services. The station passed through wartime administration as Syonan Broadcasting and postwar Radio Malaya before becoming Radio Singapura in 1959. Television arrived in 1963 with Television Singapura, making Singapore the first Southeast Asian country with TV service.

After independence in 1965, Radio Television Singapore consolidated broadcast operations. In 1980 the government reorganized it as the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation, a statutory board modeled partly on the BBC. SBC ran Channels 5 and 8 and a growing radio stable through the 1980s, producing foundational local dramas such as The Awakening.

Privatization came in 1994 when SBC was corporatized as Singapore International Media, a Temasek-owned holding company that spawned separate TV, radio and production units. The Media Corporation of Singapore branding followed in 1999, later shortened to Mediacorp. Channel NewsAsia launched the same year as the region's first English-language pan-Asian news channel.

The 2000s brought consolidation and digital expansion. Mediacorp merged with newspaper publisher SPH's TVWorks operation, and launched Toggle, later renamed meWATCH, as its streaming service in 2013. The company moved from its historic Caldecott Hill campus to the purpose-built Mediapolis@one-north facility in 2015.

Recent years reshaped the portfolio. TODAY, the free newspaper it had published since 2000 and run digitally since 2017, ceased standalone publication on 30 September 2024 and folded into CNA as CNA TODAY. Channel NewsAsia rebranded to CNA in 2019. In August 2017 Mediacorp and SPH formed Singapore Media Exchange, a joint premium advertising marketplace. Facing industry-wide pressure, Mediacorp announced 93 redundancies in September 2025, slightly over 3 percent of staff, while investing in digital-first content and regional co-productions.

As a state-owned broadcaster, Mediacorp's public commitments center on community and nation-building rather than consumer goods sustainability programs. It runs annual charity telethons including the President's Challenge and disaster relief appeals, and its campus at Mediapolis holds Green Mark environmental certification. The company reports on diversity in its four-language content mandate and sponsors media literacy initiatives through the Mediacorp Academy. Its sustainability disclosures are consolidated within Temasek's annual reporting rather than published independently.

Mediacorp's core controversy is structural: critics and press freedom organizations, including Reporters Without Borders, classify it as state media and question its independence given government funding and the overlap between its board and senior civil service ranks. Singapore ranked 123rd in the 2025 RSF press freedom index. The company maintains editorial standards policies and points to commercial accountability as counterweights.

Operationally it has drawn periodic complaints over content standards, and its 2025 retrenchment exercise drew union and public attention to job security in the sector. Talent conduct controversies, including a 2023 scandal involving artist contracts, generated national coverage but no regulatory sanction.