New Singapore Channel Makes Debut on Hongkong Cable
A new entertainment channel from Singapore – YR Asia Satellite TV – will be available on Hongkong’s I-Cable Channel 28 from this Saturday.
The “no-news, no-politics” channel offered by Net Leader Holdings, a Singapore-based international media management company, is the first regional satellite TV station broadcasting out of Singapore targeting at Mandarin-speaking audiences. The 24-hour channel will feature variety, sports, drama, animation, lifestyle and documentary content from its global content partners.
The company made the announcement today in Cannes, France, at MIPCOM 2008, where the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) is also leading a delegation of 13 Singapore firms to promote Made-by-Singapore content to international distributors and broadcasters.
After the channel’s debut in Hongkong and Macau, YR Asia is slated to launch in Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Indo-China and Pakistan by the end of this year. Plans to land in Taiwan in January 2009 are in the pipeline. Eventually, YR Asia will have a presence in 15 countries, reaching out to 1.2 billion Mandarin-speaking people in China and the rest of Asia Pacific.
In its first major content acquisition, YR Asia has purchased 100 hours of Mandarin content from Singapore and is in talks for exclusive broadcast rights to 20 hours of brand new Mandarin content supported by MDA. This bulk acquisition marks the largest of its kind for Singapore's Mandarin factual programming to date.
Dr Christopher Chia, MDA’s Chief Executive Officer, said the programme sale to YR Asia is “an example of the positive synergy” between Singapore’s growing pool of content aggregators and producers.
At MIPCOM, MDA also announced moves to further promote Singapore content abroad: Three distributors – MediaCorp, ThreeSixZero and Six-six-eight – have been appointed to undertake the international distribution of a library of over 5,000 hours of programming supported by MDA in the last two years.
Western Australia, Singapore Team Up to Nurture Cross-Media Projects
Producers in Western Australia and Singapore can stand to be awarded a total of US$90,000 in co-development funding under a new scheme to jointly create and exploit multi-platform content.
Launched today by ScreenWest, Western Australia's screen funding and development agency and its counterpart from Singapore, the Media Development Authority, the scheme has been dubbed the MDA-ScreenWest Cross-Media Development Initiative.
The initiative is inviting producers in Western Australia and Singapore to submit proposals in any of these genres – Children’s Programming, Documentary and Animation. Three selected projects will be awarded up to a total of US$90,000 in project co-development funding.
The MDA initiative follows the Australia-Singapore Film Co-production Agreement signed in September 2007.
Dr Christopher Chia, MDA’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “Singapore’s media companies already enjoy a strong working relationship with their counterparts in Australia and I am sure that this joint initiative with ScreenWest will spur more of such mutually-beneficial collaborations that will make their mark in the international market.”
The closing date for submissions is 1 December 2008 and the announcement of selected projects will be made at the Asia Television Forum to be held in Singapore from 10 to 12 December 2008.
For application details, go to www.mda.gov.sg or www.smf.sg
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