KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 17 — Kangar MP Noor Amin Ahmad applauded the Ministry of Education for launching a special terrestrial education TV channel, DidikTV, today but questioned the commercial agreement made with private TV channel ntv7 to take it over.
Ntv7 is part of conglomerate Media Prima Bhd, and the PKR MP asked of the need for Putrajaya to strike out a deal with a private business rather than leveraging on public broadcaster Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) that is already owned by the government.
“While Didik TV has taken a long time to be initiated, it is still good because is it a need, and this was stressed by former education minister Maszlee Malik.
“However, the question is how much had to be paid to take over ntv7? Why did we have to take over a private TV channel instead of using RTM which is already there?” he asked on Twitter.
DidikTV, which kick-starts today, can be viewed through channel 107 on MYTV, 147 on ASTRO and ntv7 on TV UNIFI, from 7am to midnight daily.
Financial daily The Edge reported Media Prima saying that “the strategic commercial collaboration” between the group and ministry was done to increase the access of quality education to students nationwide.
Media Prima reportedly said “this collaboration will provide a positive financial impact to Media Prima”, but said it cannot disclose the amount that it is receiving in the deal.
This comes as The Edge reported that Media Prima’s broadcasting segment’s revenue had declined by 24 per cent year-on-year to RM743.5 million in September last year.
Media Prima’s subsidiary Media Prima Television Networks fully owns Natseven TV Sdn Bhd that operates ntv7 and now DidikTV.
At almost 32 per cent, the biggest shareholder of Media Prima group is Aurora Mulia Sdn Bhd that is linked to billionaire Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar. This is followed by the Employees’ Provident Fund at around 8 per cent.
While launching the channel today, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said DidikTV will broadcast programmes based on the ministry’s curriculum and co-curriculum, as well as news on the world of education from pre-school to Form 6, edutainment programmes and student-generated content.
Muhyiddin said the ministry had taken the initiative to revive the terrestrial education TV programme slots since the implementation of the movement control order (MCO) on March 18 last year, in an effort to enable students, especially those who do not have internet access or appropriate devices, to get learning materials through television broadcasts.
