Channel 8 ( zh, 8頻道) is a Singaporean
free-to-air
Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscripti ...
television channel, airing in
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...
. It was created by
Television Singapura on 31 August 1963 with experimental broadcasts, before going official on 23 November that year. The channel's logo is a yellow number 8 on top of a red disc.
History
Channel 8 began its test transmissions on Saturday, 31 August 1963, Malaysia's national day. Its first day consisted of a Hokkien film, repeats of India's participation in the South East Asian Cultural Festival and Singapore Celebrates. A second test transmission took place between 16 and 20 September of that year and devoted much of its time to the week-long celebrations, to coincide with the historic
Proclamation of Malaysia, and the political campaigns leading up to the
1963 General Election.
Channel 8 officially began broadcasting on 23 November 1963 at 7:40 p.m. as "Saluran 8 Televisyen Singapura" and aired at first in
Chinese (including Mandarin, dialects of Chinese and Cantonese) and Tamil. Its sister station
Saluran 5 Televisyen Singapura was launched on 2 April that year with a mix of English and
Malay-language shows. Following the separation from Malaysia on 9 August 1965, Channel 8 became part of Television Singapore, and was later integrated as part of "Radio Television Singapore". This led to the expansions of the network, including a move to the new $3.6 million Television Centre in
Caldecott Hill
Caldecott Hill is a private housing estate, located along Thomson Road in the Central Region of Singapore. It is tied to the growth of the media industry in Singapore.
In the past, Singapore's broadcast station, Mediacorp was located there. Th ...
on 26 August 1966.
Channel 8 began broadcasting in colour on 1 May 1974. In 1978, all its Chinese language programming as well as advertisements, as a result of the government's
Speak Mandarin Campaign, began to be broadcast solely in the Mandarin dialect. In the fall of 1982, Channel 8 debuted the country's pioneer Mandarin language drama series, ''Seletar Robbery''. At first, Channel 8 drama productions used 16mm film, before transitioning to videotape in 1987–88, in contrast its variety programming (either live or taped) had always been videotape productions since the start of colour television. Beginning 1 August 1990, Channel 8 began airing in stereo all its Chinese and Tamil productions.
It started airing 24 hours a day on 1 September 1995, becoming a Mandarin-language only channel as all its Tamil programs were transferred to a new channel, Prime 12. It was privatised on 12 February 2001 as part of
Mediacorp
Mediacorp Pte. Ltd., doing business as Mediacorp and stylised as mediacorp, is a media conglomerate in Singapore. Owned by Temasek Holdings—the holding company of the Government of Singapore—it owns television, radio, and digital media prope ...
.
Channel 8 had a pay-to-view sister television channel named Channel 8i that existed from 19 November 2011 to 1 December 2016.
References
External links
Official Website
{{Chinese language television in Southeast Asia
Chinese-language television
Channel 8
Channel 8
Television stations in Singapore
1963 establishments in Singapore