By Les Tan/Red Sports

MediaCorp will air a 13-part series on the school sports scene from March 4th, according to a report in the Straits Times (School sports to hit prime-time television; Thursday, January 22, 2009).

All 26 sports from the three divisions (A, B, C) in the school sports calendar will be featured from the quarter-final stage onwards.

MediaCorp ran a sports-only channel called SportsCity briefly from January 2000 to January 2002.

The channel was launched at a time when the government had set three ambitious sports targets in 1999 – qualify for the 2012 Thomas Cup badminton finals and the 2010 football World Cup, and to win a medal in sailing in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The World Cup target was abandoned while the the sailors did not win a medal at Beijing last year.

During the channel’s brief existence, apart from a focus on the S.League, there was no sustained effort to develop local sports content.

The channel relied on broadcasting the English Premier League and a host of international sports like the European football championships, Rugby World Seven Series and Formula One for its reason for living.

The channel, the only free sports channel of its kind at its launch, was finally shut down at the end of 2002 after losing millions, partly because it was competing against the slicker production values of ESPN that was available on cable by the then Singapore Cable Vision (present-day StarHub). The loss of broadcast rights for the English Premier League also contributed to the channel’s demise.

The upcoming youth sports programme on MediaCorp Channel 5 is a collaborative project between the Ministry of Education (MOE), the Singapore Sports Council (SSC) and MediaCorp.

The cost of production and airtime was not revealed. However, Singapore industry production costs generally run in the region of S$15-20,000 per episode or even higher. At S$20k per episode, production costs alone would be S$260,000.

The Singapore sports scene can do with the oxygen of publicity that comes with a free-to-air terrestrial broadcast, especially the youth sports scene where future national athletes get their first taste of competition.

In Singapore, the overwhelming focus in the English national media has been on international sports, a point brought up by Senior Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports, Teo Ser Luck.

“Right now, there could be too much of a focus on international soccer leagues. I think it’s important to give more coverage to local sports,” he told the Straits Times.

The Singapore sports scene generally does not received editorial support on a sustained basis in the English newspapers or MediaCorp.

The New Paper, Today and the Straits Times typically focus on the English Premier League and international sports events.

The S.League, Singapore’s only professional sports league, receives limited coverage in both the New Paper and the Straits Times. The only sustained coverage of the S.League comes from Today, which also receives advertising spend from the Football Association of Singapore.

On Channel NewsAsia, sports updates on the scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen usually highlight international rather than local sports, let alone youth sports.

The Singapore Slingers, Singapore’s first professional sports outfit, played in the Australian National Basketball League for two years from 2006 to 2008 and received no sustained coverage in the English mainstream press.

Their recently concluded Challenge Series which featured Asian teams also suffered the same fate.

As for youth sports, the Straits Times produces a once-a-wee captioned picture montage, with the odd feature or two, and coverage of key finals like rugby, swimming and track and field.

Youth sports competitions generally receive no sustained coverage in either Today or the New Paper.

An MDA-funded initiative in 2008 saw the launch of Adrenaline which focuses on Singapore sports. Its programmes are shown on MioTV and StarHub but are not available on the MediaCorp free-to-air channels.

Two sports magazines have also recently folded. SportMag, a monthly magazine focused on Singapore sport, ceased publishing early in 2008. Draw n Dish, a basketball lifestyle magazine which reincarnated itself as Jumpshot, also seems to have disappeared from the shelves.

Red Sports, with a focus on Singapore sports, was launched in February 2007 and currently has an average of 40,000 absolute unique visitors.

This site covered the school sports scene in 2007 and in 2008, expanded coverage to national sports events as well.

This site runs with a full-time crew of one person and a group of volunteers and freelancers, and is a private initiative with no affiliation to SSC, MOE, MCYS or Singapore Press Holdings (SPH).

To help develop sports journalism skills for the mission of this site, Red Sports trained a first batch of 23 youth interns for free in June 2008 who then embarked on a six-month REDaction! internship programme with the site. A second batch will begin their internship this month. It is our intention to make this internship a regular feature.

Red Sports believes that the Singapore sports story is worth telling. It is heartening to see the big boys coming round to that conclusion as well. © Red Sports

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