SPH recently reported that its turnover for its newspaper and magazine business declined in the third quarter of its financial year. SPH said that the turnover for its newspaper and magazine business declined 7.6 percent to S$239.5 million, mainly due to an 8.2 percent fall in advertisement revenue and 5.8 per cent decrease in circulation revenue.
Commenting on its less than stellar performance, SPH’s chief executive officer Alan Chan said in a statement that the Government controlled media company has embarked on a “comprehensive review of its core media business”.
The media company recently appointed former Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) chief executive Ng Yat Chung to its Board in the hopes that he would “steer SPH to greater heights of organisational and business excellence.” (https://theindependent.sg.sg/lg-ns-ng-who-sold-nol-to-french-now-wants-to-turn-sph-around)
The advent of free to read online news sites like The Independent Singapore has caused many print-media organisations all over the world to close shop in recent times. And even Singapore’s largest Chinese-language newspaper, Lianhe Zaobao, with a daily circulation of about 176,000, is not an exception to this.
To arrest the declining sales, the Chinese newspaper recently enlisted the help of none less than the “godfather” of Singapore’s Mandopop, Liang Wern Fook, to pen the song. “Finding back the feeling”, to promote the publication.
MP for McPherson constituency, Tin Pei Ling, is also featured in the video with her baby.
There are close ties between the directors of SPH and the Singapore Government. S R Nathan, Director of the Security and Intelligence Division and later President of Singapore served as SPH’s Executive chairman from 1982 to 1988.
The first President of SPH, Tjong Yik Min (1994–2002), was the former chief of the Internal Security Department.
The immediate former Chairman of SPH, Tony Tan was Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore from 1994 to 2005. He is currently the President of Singapore.
Dr Lee Boon Yang, a former Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, is the current chairman of Singapore Press Holdings. Dr Lee has previously stated that the print media is important to Singapore because it “has a heavy and responsible role in our nation building effort.”