Country | Malta |
---|---|
Headquarters | Gwardamanġa, Malta |
Programming | |
Language(s) | Maltese (main) English (secondary) |
Picture format | 1080i HDTV |
Ownership | |
Owner | Public Broadcasting Services (Government of Malta) |
Sister channels | TVMNews+ TVMSport+ Parliament TV |
History | |
Launched | 29 September 1962 |
Former names | Malta Television (MTV) (1962–1981) |
Links | |
Website | tvmnews.mt |
Availability | |
Terrestrial | |
Free-to-air | 43 (UHF) |
GO | 101 |
Melita | 101 |
Streaming media | |
TVMi | tvmi.mt |
Television Malta (Maltese : Televixin Malta; TVM) (formerly known as Malta Television Service;MTV) is a terrestrial television network in Malta operated by the national broadcaster, Public Broadcasting Services. Alongside TVM, PBS operates TVMNews+ (formerly TVM 2) and TVMSport+. [1]
The Malta Television Service (MTV), was launched on 29 September 1962 as the first television service in the country, with technical backing from Rediffusion UK, [2] although television broadcasts from neighbouring Sicily in far-southern Italy could be received in Malta from as early as 1957. [3] In 1975, Xandir Malta (Broadcasting Malta), the precursor to the Public Broadcasting Services was established by parliament. [4]
Italian radio transmissions, popular since the 1920s, influenced Maltese listeners. To counter this influence, British authorities granted a radio license to Rediffusion, a British broadcast company, in 1935, where it had one channel featuring BBC content and another featuring Maltese content.
On 29 September 1962, local television in Malta was introduced. The Malta Television Service was launched as a subsidiary of Rediffusion Malta. Programming on the inaugural night included a mix of speeches from Governor Sir Maurice Dorman, Archbishop Mgr Sir Michael Gonzi and Prime Minister George Borg Olivier, a number of imported British productions, some Maltese productions and the Daily Newscast. [5] Broadcasts lasted 4.5 hours daily.
Until 1964, TVM was based at Rediffusion House in Gwardamanġa, after which it was moved to the nearby, purpose-built Television House. [6]
In 1975, following the breakdown of discussions on the new collective agreement a sit-in strike and a lockout of management was held by Rediffusion Malta employees. On February 14 1975, the Action Committee formed to organise the sit-in announced it to the workers. At 7:38am, broadcasting was stopped and doors were closed to the management and non-Union workers. The workers, during the sit-in also established an Emergency Service, which broadcast a short news bulletin. The Rediffusion Group of Companies demanded police intervention to stop the "illegal" occupation and broadcasting. They also attempted to lease a hotel room as a temporary office but were thwarted by the GWU threatening the hotel with a strike. On 19 February 1975, regular broadcasting was resumed, however under the direction of Union officials and not Rediffusion/MTV management.
Prime Minister Dom Mintoff expressed sympathy for the workers and stated the government's support for terminal benefits. He indicated the government would intervene if the situation became critical but downplayed the urgency compared to essential services. The Rediffusion Group started legal proceedings against union officials and striking workers for violating property rights and unauthorized broadcasting. The GWU countered by arguing their actions were protected under industrial dispute regulations. This led to the MBA being silent, and 2 of its members representing the Partit Nazzjonalista publicly criticizing the Authority. [7]
This led to the TV Service being Nationalised. Xandir Malta, the precursor to PBS was established as part of Telemalta, a government owned company.
Colour TV was introduced in Malta on 8 July 1981. This was following in the footsteps of RAI, who was already transmitting TV in colour back in the 1970s. This switch led to the slow switchover of Maltese households from owning Black and White TVs to Colour TVs. There were some broadcasting hiccups, with some presenters forgetting they were being broadcasting in colour and making some hilarious mistakes. [8]
In October 2011, PBS announced a full overhaul of the TVM brand, to mark 50 years since the establishment of the Malta Television Service in 2012. The new branding pays homage to previous TVM identities, and makes use of the Maltese cross, which features heavily in the 2010s' L-Aħbarijiet title sequence. This was extended to all TVM related services, including the tvm.com.mt website and the PBS branding.
This rebrand was part of a larger step forward towards modernising the services offered by TVM. This included switching to a widescreen format (16:9) and slowly starting the transition towards broadcasting in HD. [9]
In 2021, PBS announced another rebrand. The rebrand was met with criticism, since it was held in the form of a competition, and the competitors didn't even get acknowledgment for participating. The new logos for PBS, TVM and TVMNews+ were especially met with fierce criticism, after some competitors took to Facebook to share their designs. [10]
This was an overhaul of all their stations. TVM's main focus turned into drama and family entertainment. TVM2 was rebranded to TVMNews+ which started focusing on News and Current affairs. TVM's online presence was also changed, with the URL of the online portal being changed from tvm.com.mt to tvmnews.mt [11]
After the fierce criticism faced in the rebrand prior, TVM subtly rebranded their channels in early October 2023. The rebrand has not been fully executed since some services such as the tvmnews.mt website are still using the 2021 design language.
In March 2012, PBS started its trial transmissions on the new sister channel TVM2, which replaced Education 22 (E22). The broadcast time starts at 6am and finishes at around 11:30pm.
In 2021, TVM2 was rebranded to TVMNews+, and transformed from a secondary channel to the channel for news and current affairs programmes.
TVMSports+ was launched on 29 September 2022 [12] as part of the celebrations of 50 years of TVM Broadcasting. Before the TVMSports+ channel, sport programmes used to be scattered across TVM and TVM 2. During some flagship sporting events, TVM 2 used to be rebranded to TVM Sports
Parliament TV is a joint venture between the PBS and the Parliament of Malta.
On 8 March 2012, PBS also started trials of TVM HD, the first HD channel from Malta. The channel was available to all those who had Melita and could be found on channel 110. [13] GO, Melita's main rival in the cable television industry in Malta included the service later in their schedule and also exclusively TVM2 HD. This channel was eventually retired once all TVM programmes were being broadcast in HD. The logo was used in popular culture after the channel removal.
TVMi is TVM's free streaming service. It offers livestreams of the TV Channels and Radio Channels that are operated by PBS (except Parliament TV). On demand recordings of most past programmes are also available. The service also includes the schedule for the TVM branded channels.
In 2022, TVMi was rebranded to become a more modern streaming service, in line with the 2021 rebrand. It was not updated in 2023 to match the 2023 design language
TVM broadcasts a mix of news, sport, entertainment, magazine programming and children's programmes. It is funded through a government grant and commercial advertising. The majority of programmes broadcast on TVM are produced externally of PBS. PBS publishes details of the types of programmes it wishes to broadcast on TVM and production companies provide PBS with a detailed report of their proposal for the programme.
Most programmes are broadcast in Maltese, however the Maltese speak both Maltese and English so English also features, mainly in BBC and ITV titles. Sunday evenings are dedicated to classic British comedy, and English language films are shown on Saturday evenings. The English language feed of Euronews is also broadcast daily.
A new programme schedule was announced, including an increased number of news bulletins and a new current affairs-led breakfast show. For several years including the 2015/2016 period TVM had the highest number of viewers compared to the rest of Maltese television stations put together. Some of the current hits are Xarabank , Disset , Strada Stretta , Skjetti and news broadcasting. Statistics show that more than a quarter of the population of Malta watch these on a regular basis. [14]
News programming on TVM is the only major TV news not produced by a political party's media apparatus in Malta. The two other major Maltese networks (One and NET Television) are owned by the Labour and Nationalist parties respectively.
TVM airs TVAM, a breakfast television program focused on news and current affairs, weekday mornings from 06:30 to 09:00.
TVM's main newscast L-Aħbarijiet ("News"), commonly referred to as L-Aħbarijiet tat-tmienja ("News at 8") is aired daily from 20:00 to 20:50, along with short news updates titled throughout the day. When important events happened, such as the death of Queen Elizabeth II and Pope Benedict XVI, TVM broadcast lengthened editions of their regular News Bulletins. [15] When Breaking News (Aħbar Straordinarja) breaks out, TVM occasionally interrupts regular programming to broadcast a special news report [16]
Since 2012, a nightly newscast in Maltese Sign Language has aired on sister network TVMNews+ at 18:00. [17]
TVM previously carried bulletins in English from Euronews and Britain's ITN. TVMNews+ still regularly broadcasts streams from Euronews to fill gaps in their programming schedule.
BBC News is an international English-language pay television channel owned by BBC Global News Ltd.— a subsidiary of BBC Studios—and operated by the BBC News division of the BBC. The network carries news bulletins, documentaries, and other factual programmes; its programming is based out of studios in London, Washington, D.C., and Singapore. As of April 2023, the channel largely operates as an international feed of the BBC News channel in the UK, sharing the majority of its schedule.
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream and popular BBC One.
ITV1 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the British media company ITV plc. It provides the Channel 3 public broadcast service across all of the United Kingdom except for the central and northern areas of Scotland where STV provides the service.
Star World is an English language entertainment television channel originally launched on 15 December 1991 by Star TV in Hong Kong as the old iteration of Star Plus. Originally available in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, as well as India and South Asia, since 2024 it is only available in the Middle East and North Africa after the closure of the Indian and Taiwanese feeds.
UKTV Media Limited, trading as UKTV, is a British multi-channel broadcaster, which, since 2019, has been wholly owned by BBC Studios, a commercial subsidiary of the BBC. It was formed on 1 November 1992 through a joint venture between the BBC and Thames Television. It is one of the United Kingdom's largest television companies.
Public Broadcasting Services Limited (PBS) is the public broadcaster of Malta. PBS is funded by government grants and the sale of commercial airtime. Its TVM channel is Malta's most watched television channel, and its radio station Magic Malta enjoys huge popularity among local and tourist listeners.
Eden is a British pay television channel broadcasting nature content with some factual entertainment programming in the United Kingdom and Ireland as part of the UKTV network of channels. The channel originally launched on 8 March 2004 and relaunched in its current format on 27 January 2009.
ABC TV Plus is an Australian free-to-air television channel owned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and part of its ABC Television network. The channel broadcasts a range of general entertainment programming. The channel operates between the hours of 07:30pm and 02:00am AEST/AEDT daily, the channel's bandwidth is used for the ABC Kids channel for young children during the remaining hours of the day.
KHQ-TV is a television station in Spokane, Washington, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is the flagship and namesake of the KHQ Television Group, a subsidiary of the locally based Cowles Company, which also owns The Spokesman-Review newspaper. KHQ-TV's studios are located on West Sprague Avenue in Downtown Spokane, and its transmitter is located on Krell Hill southeast of the city. The station also operates a 24-hour sports and weather channel called SWX Right Now on digital subchannel 6.2.
Welt is a German conservative free-to-air television news channel owned by WeltN24 GmbH.
ITN World News was a newscast shown during the late 1980s and most of the 1990s. It was either shown on cable or satellite television, or shown internationally. The newscast was broadcast from London, England, and was produced by Independent Television News. A domestic national version was also shown in the United Kingdom on terrestrial television.
Radio Malta is the main radio service of Public Broadcasting Services, the public broadcaster of Malta.
Television in Malta was first introduced in 1957. The first person to sell televisions in Malta was The Most Noble Count Consiglio D'Amato.
TVMNews+ is a terrestrial television network in Malta, operated by national broadcaster Public Broadcasting Services. Unlike the more wide-ranging TVM network, TVMNews+ focuses primarily on newscasting and educational television.
Malta participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 with the song "Chameleon" written by Joacim Persson, Paula Winger, Borislav Milanov and Johan Alkenäs. The song was performed by Michela. The Maltese entry for the 2019 contest in Tel Aviv, Israel, was selected through the first season of the music competition X Factor Malta, organised by the Maltese broadcaster Public Broadcasting Services (PBS). The competition concluded with a final on 26 January 2019 where Michela eventually emerged as the winner. The song Michela would perform at the Eurovision Song Contest, "Chameleon", was internally selected and released to the public on 10 March.
Rediffusion House is a Modernist building located in Gwardamanġa, limits of Pietà, Malta. Designed by the architect Carmelo Falzon, the building was completed in 1958 for Rediffusion (Malta) Ltd. It briefly housed Television Malta in the 1960s before a purpose-built Television House was constructed in 1964. The building continued to house Rediffusion until 1975, when the company's operations were taken over by Xandir Malta.
This is a timeline of the history of the British broadcaster Channel Television. It provides the ITV service for the Channel Islands.
Malta participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 in Turin, Italy, with the song "I Am What I Am" performed by Emma Muscat. The Maltese entry for the 2022 contest was initially selected through the national final Malta Eurovision Song Contest 2022, organised by the Maltese broadcaster Public Broadcasting Services (PBS). The competition consisted of a semi-final round, a special show and a final, held on 17, 18 and 19 February 2022, respectively, where "Out of Sight" performed by Muscat eventually emerged as the winning entry after scoring the most points from a six-member jury and a public televote. On 14 March 2022, PBS announced that Muscat would ultimately perform "I Am What I Am" in Turin; the song was released to the public on the same day.
Digital on-screen graphic by country refers to how use of these logos in television vary in different countries and regions.
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