Allow me to get personal on this. And sentimental as well.

This is about ntv7.

The terrestrial TV station was set up in 1998 under the entity of Natseven TV Sdn Bhd by businessman Tan Sri Effendi Nowawi.

I’ve always liked their look and feel. Bright and breezy and colorful in line with its tagline – the Feel Good Channel or Saluran Ceria Anda. Nice!

And although I was a newsman from a rival station, I always liked ntv7 News in studio presentation especially. Not their content, but rather their “policy”.

As I did not follow the ntv7 news closely, I’ll have to depend on what people told me about this policy.

By people I mean the station’s news staff themselves.

The policy I was told (years ago) was this – ntv7 news must cover and present only good happy news to go along with the Feel Good Channel brand. That to me was odd – a policy which I can’t subscribe to. But that’s how it was. ntv7 with their coverage of happy news only.

On 6 Aug 1998, i.e. four months after ntv7 began transmission, one of its news staff, Mohd Azrin Radzim was killed in a road accident.

He was on his way to the ntv7 studio in Glenmarie in Shah Alam for work when he fell off his motorcycle.

A news stringer for ntv7 was passing by, saw Azrin’s body lying on the road, shot it on video.

The news staff wanted to carry the story in its bulletin. The bosses said this would be against their good-news-only policy. A heated argument ensued, I was told, before the management relented.

The late Azrin was my nephew. May Allah bless his soul. Al Fatehah.

In 2005, Media Prima Berhad acquired ntv7. I was then with TV3 news which was (and still is) part of Media Prima.

I was sent to ntv7 to helm its News and Current Affairs Department as Editor-in-Chief.

ntv7 news then was operating under what was called the MNN or My News Network brand with a specific news policy (no more happy news only) which I do not intend to talk about here.

Suffice to say that I, with the blessings of Media Prima News Director Datuk Kamarulzaman Zainal, changed all that.

As I was deployed to ntv7 with only a deputy from TV3, I had to gain the trust and respect of the existing staff fast.

Naturally some had to go. A new team was set up and we went about making the changes we wanted.

Out went the MNN brand. I brought back the “Edition” or “Edisi” brand of the ntv7 of old.

We ran news bulletins in Malay, English and Mandarin several times daily as opposed to Mondays to Fridays news bulletins before we came in.

But there were things which we could not carry out due to commitments made by the previous management which we had to respect and honor, for obvious reasons.

Long story short. I introduced a bulletin called Mid Day Edition – a 30-minute presentation in Malay, English and Mandarin. It featured 10 minutes of news in Malay, followed by 10 minutes in English and rounded off with 10 minutes in Mandarin. Three in one, all three news presenters side by side on set.

The worry, or should I say concern, back then was the perceived complaint from the Indian community as Tamil news was not part of the bulletin.

I had expected MIC to come on strongly in protest and thus warned my bosses to brace themselves for an onslaught.

Meantime, I made contingency plan just in case we had to bow to the demands and include Tamil news in Mid Day Edition.

However, the complaints never came. Why? Honestly I don’t know till today. Perhaps the Indian community was never made aware about the Mid Day Edition.

When I planned the three-language Mid Day Edition I had high hopes of it to be a hit. After all, it was something new in Malaysian TV news presentation. If not for anything else, I thought the novelty would make Mid Day Edition fly.

But it did not. Random surveys showed audience were somewhat “confused” and could not relate to the bulletin.

It was subsequently scrapped and became a Malay news bulletin.

A friend of mine, also a newsman, told me Mid Day Edition came at the ‘wrong’ time.

Then prime minister Datuk Seri (now Tun) Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was championing the Islam Hadhari concept.

Had the three-language Mid Day Edition introduced later, i.e. during Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s tenure, it would be a success as it would gel with his 1Malaysia narrative.

I don’t know, but the reality is that when Najib became PM, I had to leave Media Prima to make way for pro-Najib personnel.

When I came to ntv7, news ratings were low, as any TV man would tell you in television, be it for news or other programs, ratings matter.

But from the beginning we, or rather I, knew that ntv7 news would not get the ratings, not the numbers we wanted anyway. And the air time given to news, to begin with, certainly did not help matters.

Hence I had to get help, so to speak. ntv7 News collaborated with top financial news outfit The Edge Malaysia.

We both needed the exposure. Ratings did not increase drastically. i don’t know about The Edge‘s circulation, but I got what I wanted a – a niche.

The Edge readers comprising captains of industry CEOs and what not watched ntv7 news. ntv7 news viewers got to know about The Edge. We both got what we wanted. It was a win-win as I saw it.

The Bahasa Malaysia edition consolidated its position to an extent but the main setback was the time slot allocated to it.

At 7pm, the Malay audience was simply not there, what with Maghrib prayers minutes away.

But Mandarin news and its current affairs programs were successful and proved to be one of the department’s revenue earners.

Sadly, the ntv7 Mandarin news is no more now. (I wrote about this last year).

The talk shows in English and Mandarin made the station proud.

I must admit ntv7 news then had ruffled a few feathers and stepped on toes. Big toes, particularly in Umno.

Soon after the 2008 general elections, a quantitative study coordinated by the Center for Independent Journalism in collaboration with Writers Alliance for Media Independence and Aliran was released.

And it said among others “while most of the mainstream media were BN cheerleaders, ntv7 and The Sun offered some hope in providing balanced coverage”.

I am proud of that, considering the obstacles faced back then.

During my time as Editor-in-Chief, a number of staff resigned mostly due to offers from production houses and other organizations.

I knew that could be seen in a negative light on my style of management. But I did not try to stop them from leaving, simply because I did not have the authority to make any counter-offer, especially in terms of salary.

At least one wanted to come back after leaving ntvt7 News for a few months. I took him back albeit at a lower position than the one he was in when he resigned.

Did I make mistakes? Yes. But I would like to believe there were more rights than wrongs.

 I made friends at ntv7. And enemies too. Again, I would like to believe I made more friends than enemies during my stint at the station. I thank you all for your support.

I left ntv7 (Media Prima) in 2009.

Why? As said earlier, to make way for pro-Najib folks. I’ve written about this a little bit previously..Perhaps I’ll elaborate at another time.

But why am I blabbering about all this? I can’t stop you if you want to accuse me of going on an ego trip.

But the reason for this lengthy down-memory-lane piece is because starting today (Feb 17), ntv7 is rebranded as an educational channel known as Didik TV, in a tie-up with the education ministry to increase access to education for students all over the country.

Hence a look back at my time at ntv7.

But the collaboration and rebranding is might as well. ntv7 has been dying a slow death for years now, but then the other channels in the Media Prima stable are not in the pinkest of health either. That’s the sad state of affairs Malaysia TV is in now.

I have been told that many of the ntv7 staff would be running Didik TV operations. That would mean no retrenchments. Thank God!

Now ntv7 has a chance. As Didik TV, they can get the ratings. Students, or should it be school-going children, will watch it, not that they have any other choice. That would mean guaranteed ratings, especially during this pandemic.

People at ntv7 wearing the Didik TV tags can contribute. Hopefully they will do a good job to help our students who have suffered enough during this pandemic. They need all the help they can get. Do it for them. Please.

(Mohsin Abdullah is a veteran journalist and now a freelancer who writes about this, that and everything else.)