‘MYTV, Media Prima negotiating rental fee pricing’

KUALA LUMPUR: Broadcasters such as Media Prima Bhd will start paying MYTV Broadcasting Sdn Bhd annual rental fee once MyFreeview fully digital terrestrial TV (DTT) system kicks off in June next year.

They were now paying Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) directly under the current analogue set-up, said Public Investment Bank Bhd, which attended the launch of the digitalisation of Malaysia’s freeto-air television (FTA TV) on Tuesday.

“According to MYTV, it was willing to charge Media Prima the same annual transmission fee it was already paying to TM, without additional cost for the standard definition (SD) channel, as the government’s directive was for MYTV not to charge more than the amount a broadcaster was paying to TM.

“However, MYTV and Media Prima have not reached any agreement and are still negotiating on the pricing,” said PublicInvest in a report yesterday.

It said the disagreement between MYTV and existing FTA broadcasters would be resolved prior to the targeted Total Analogue Switch Off (ASO) deadline in June 30 next year.

In order to kick-start the digital migration initiative, the government and MYTV would provide free MYTV set-top boxes (STB) to 4.2 million households who qualified for BR1M (Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia).

An STB or an integrated digital television that comes with a builtin set-top box is required to view the digital transmission.

STB will receive digital signals and decode them to analogue. It would then allow for a digital viewing experience on the analogue television set.

The FTA TV channels available on myFreeview now are TV1, TV2, TVi, TV3, ntv7, 8TV, TV9, TV AlHijrah and Bernama News Channel. MYTV has been appointed by the government to develop and operate the infrastructure and network facilities of DTT.