BNC, Bernama's TV channel, turns 11

KUALA LUMPUR,  Feb 28 (Bernama) -- Bernama News Channel (BNC), the television service of the Malaysian National News Agency (Bernama), celebrated its 11th anniversary today, proud of having achieved rapid growth in the dissemination of information to all levels of society.

BNC is now actively diversifying its programmes and reports for its viewers while assisting the government to disseminate information and serve as a platform to channel feedback from the people to the government, said Bernama editor-in-chief Datuk Zakaria Abdul Wahab.

“There are now more programmes, more talk shows. Besides the usual reports, BNC is now more focused, knows its niche market and serves all of the people besides conveying news and information on the share market, housing, economy, Malay community and others.

“In fact, in order to build the clientele, BNC has reverted to reporting in four languages, Bahasa Malaysia, English, Mandarin and Tamil,” he told Bernama at the BNC 11th anniversary celebration held in the compound of Wisma Bernama at Jalan Bernama here.

Bernama was established as a statutory body under an act of parliament in 1967 and started operating on May 26, 1968, initially releasing news in text form. It underwent a transformation and introduced an audio-visual unit known as BernamaTV in September 1998.

On Feb 28, 2008, the 24-hour news channel BernamaTV was launched over the Astro 502 channel. This came a year after Bernama set up Radio24, the first news radio station in the country that operates round the clock. Then, on May 25, 2016, BernamaTV was rebranded as BNC.

Zakaria said that in line with technological advancement, BNC also used various social media platforms for wider coverage, such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook which can be accessed on the smartphone.

He stressed that all these were supported by the efforts, expertise and skills of the BNC staff, all trained and experienced in overcoming all sorts of challenges in the media industry.

Meanwhile, Bernama deputy editor-in-chief (audio-visual) Abdul Rahman Ahmad said that though BNC had turned 11, there was much room for the channel to improve in terms of the quality of delivery of news and information to the public.

“We cannot remain stagnant. There must be more programmes, more improvement, changes to concepts or (studio) sets. We hope BNC will grow to be more attractive and draw more clients and viewers,” he said.

BNC now has an audience of 2.4 million people a month, compared to 1.1 million before the 14th  general election on May 9 last year.

-- BERNAMA