In 2000, Singapore liberalised its decades-long restrictions on the number of media allowed to operate in the country. The move was a response to complaints that Singapore’s local media was under the thumb of the government despite being a successful and progressive modern state and an international financial hub. Media freedom did not measure up to its economic success.
The liberalisation was, however, not done in a big bang fashion. It was orchestrated in a controlled manner. Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), the dominant newspaper publisher, was given licences to operate TV and radio stations. State broadcaster MediaCorp was issued a daily newspaper permit to launch the free paper Today.
That started many years of fierce head-on competition between two media giants with SPH — which already publishes several paid English and vernacular dailies — not conceding an inch with the launch of its on free sheet, Streats.
Observing these developments from across the causeway, we decided to test how far the Singapore authorities was prepared to go. Will it allow a Malaysian news publisher to start in Singapore?
Despite the two countries having been separated for 56 years (since 1965), the laws forbidding newspapers from each country to be circulated in each market are still in place. Of course, this is silly in today’s Internet world but there is no motivation (political or economic) to remove them.
But what if a Malaysian media wanted to launch a business weekly like The Edge Malaysia in Singapore? Will we be allowed to?
We were not optimistic but made an application anyway sometime in mid-2001. To our surprise, after a few months, we got the approval.
After that, it was a mad rush to launch. Aside from myself, a few other staff from Malaysia — BK Tan, Edward Stanislaus, Suresh Kumar — relocated to Singapore and stayed on for a number of years. We also hired several others locally to help with the launch in March 2002.
A few from the founding team, or who joined in the early years — Cecilia Chow, Goola Warden, Audrey Simon, Lee Pang Chuan and Chan Chao Peh —are still with The Edge Singapore, while the Malaysians have all relocated back to Kuala Lumpur.
After almost 20 years, The Edge Singapore and its associate publication EdgeProp.sg are fully locally operated and no longer rely on back-end editing by the Malaysian team. This is a right thing to have, as it is only those who are in Singapore who will have a better sense of what is going on.
Many things have changed since Singapore liberalised the media sector some 20 years ago. Difficult market conditions forced a consolidation several years ago that saw the closure of Streats and SPH retreating away from TV.
Today, the industry has been totally disrupted. Competition is no longer just between publishers, but mainly against tech giants and social media platforms. Even the mighty SPH has had to bite the bullet and split its media business to a new entity that will likely be funded by public money
Like everyone else, The Edge Singapore will have to remodel its operations. I am confident that under the leadership of CEO Bernard Tong, it will continue with its unique role of providing insights and perspectives about Singapore and the global economy and financial markets for many more years to come.
Congratulations to the team on its 1,000th issue.
Ho Kay Tat, publisher and group CEO of The Edge Media Group, was editor-in-chief of The Edge Singapore between 2002 and 2006
Photo of Ho Kay Tat at the EdgeProp Singapore Excellence Awards in 2017: Samuel Isaac Chua/The Edge Singapore
See: What if The Edge…?
