From Public to Private: TV in Singapore

Abstract

Since the mid-1980s, the Singapore government has engaged in a program of privatisation. This has seen the largely interventionist government regime established by Lee Kuan Yew voicing its willingness to stand aside to give a greater role to the private sector - a significant step given that government's participatory role in the Singaporean economy since coming to power in 1959, and the empowerment of the public sector with the First Development Plan 1961-64. Of specific interest to this paper is the 'privatisation' of the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) in October 1994, and the creation of the Television Corporation of Singapore (TCS). This new entity controls Channels 5 and 8, Singapore's dominant terrestrial channels, commanding an audience share of more than 80% between them. I intend to trace the history of TCS, particularly the English language Channel 5, from the early days of Radio Television Singapore (RTS), through to the formation of SBC and to corporatisation in 1994. This will reveal that privatisation has taken a particularly Singaporean path in that it sees the government, through controls administered by government-linked companies, still able, in the words of Birch, 'to maintain its rhetoric of control and containment'.