Milestones
On 31 March 2000, Mr Lee Cheok Yew was appointed as the CEO of SPH MediaWorks Ltd. Mr Man Shu Sum and some of the MediaCorp artistes joined from SPH MediaWorks the former as Chief Operating Officer of MediaCorp.
On 6 May 2001, SPH MediaWorks Channel U, a Mandarin channel and its English counterpart as SPH MediaWorks TV Works were launched.
On 3 October 2001, SPH Radio Broadcasting Arm a joint management between SPH Multimedia and NTUC Media was launched as SPH UnionWorks; owns, manages, and operates UFM 1003 and WKRZ 91.3FM. Both radio stations were simply re-branded and resume operations of Heart 100.3FM and 91.3FM previously wholly owned by NTUC Media.
On 3 March 2002, SPH MediaWorks TV Works was renamed SPH MediaWorks Channel i.
On 4 December 2002, MediaWorks won the "Broadcaster of the Year" award in "Asia Television Awards". Channel U also bagged the "Channel of the Year" award.
Channel U too organises a charity show, "Ren Ci Charity Show", shortly after being named the Broadcaster of the Year. Ren Ci Charity Show bears similarity to those hosted by MediaCorp. Audience will be fed with intense performance presented by actors, actress and guest and encouraged to donate, commonly through telephone or mobile phone. However, this program does not make use of material incentive to encourage donations unlike any other charity shows going on then With the great team effort of the Mediaworks team in both years of the show under SPH MediaWorks donations broke previously set records.
Mr Lee Cheok Yew resigned as CEO of SPH MediaWorks on 1 April 2003.
Channel i News won the "Best News Programme" of "Asia Television Awards" on 19 December 2003.
On 17 September 2004, MediaCorp CEO Ernest Wong struck a deal with SPH CEO Alan Chen to merge their mass-market television and free newspaper. The two media companies have previously been scathed and stifled by stiff and unhealthy competition from each other and the merger is widely seen as inevitable. MediaCorp Television Broadcasting Arm will be created upon the completion of merging. MediaCorp will have an 80% management while Singapore Press Holdings will own the remainder.
On 31 December 2004, MediaCorp and Singapore Press Holdings jointly announced that the merger is legally completed and that SPH MediaWorks Channel i after being seen as not commercially viable to maintain the channel (mainly due to the small English language television market in Singapore) was closing. It ceased transmission on Saturday (Weekend), 1 January 2005 at 01:30 am early dawn morning time (UTC+8).
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