Malaysia’s number one Chinese station MY FM held its 3rd Birthday Bash in Sarawak on Saturday night, flying in Taiwanese singer Anthony Neely for a special performance.
Although the station is relatively new in Sabah and Sarawak, it has a fifteen year history on the Malaysian peninsular. Asia Radio Today spoke to William Yap, MY FM Assistant Content Manager, to find out more about the station.
1) Tell us all about MY FM, Malaysia and its format and strengths.
MY FM has reaffirmed its position as the No.1 Chinese language station in Malaysia in the recent Nielsen survey with 2 million weekly listeners.
The station was established in year 1998 and just celebrated its 15th anniversary in Kuala Lumpur in August.
It is is designed for 15-29 year old urban Chinese-speaking listeners.
Our Breakfast Show with Jack Lim, Gan Mei Yan and Jeff Chin has maintained its top spot as the No. 1 Chinese Breakfast show in the country, entertaining 1.2 million listeners. Their infectious quirkiness is hard to beat. In fact, it is their friendly laughter that listeners have become accustomed to, providing a great start to the day.
Our shows are presented in both Mandarin and Cantonese and our format includes the latest songs from local and international artistes such as Fish Leong, Leehom Wang, Nicholas Teo, Eason Chen, Jolin Tsai, Jay Chow and more.
MY FM also hosts an annual music award event, based on the weekly chart show, the ‘MY Astro Music Chart’.
The station is the sole Chinese radio representative from Malaysia in “The Global Chinese Golden Chart” that brings together Chinese radio stations from Taiwan, China, Singapore, Canada and the US.
Most of our DJs are also well-known in Malaysia. They are not just studio announcers but also actors and actresses in local and international movies.
2. Tell me more about Astro Radio’s regional programmes in Sabah and Sarawak?
Astro Radio broadened its presence in Sabah & Sarawak in 2010, when it introduced localized content on ERA fm (Malay), MY FM (Chinese) and hitz.fm (English) in Kuching and Kota Kinabalu.
The initial stage saw MY FM air local programmes on weekdays from 10am to 1 pm, offering popular music from the local scene and vital information from around the region. This has been extended to eight hours a day in Kota Kinabalu and six hours per day in Kuching.
We have also rolled-out coverage to Sandakan and Miri recently too.
We’re holding a special Birthday Bash concert on Sarawak this weekend to celebrate our third anniversary.
3) So what exactly is planned?
The Birthday Bash will be the biggest Chinese entertainment event in Kuching over the past three years and our biggest to date.
Each year, we have produced a different theme. This year, we have put together a musical play called ‘Fantasy Adventure’ featuring our Sarawak announcers and the national Breakfast Show team.
The show tells the story of a young girl from another dimension who lands at the Fantasy World, where she defeats a wizard and saves the nation.
Taiwanese star Anthony Neely, along with Fuying & Sam, Bell ‘Yu Tian’, Pink ‘Chen Ke Bing’ and Alvin ‘Zhong Jin Hua’ will also take part.
Several dance groups in Kuching will also help us to mesh the performances together and last but not least, our audience will also play an important role in the show.
The Birthday Bash concert has been promoted heavily on air, online, via our on the ground cruiser vehicles and in local newspapers.
We’ve given away thousands of passes to listeners and will be flying two winners with their partners from Miri to Kuching to celebrate with us this year.
4) What kind of organisation goes into an event like this? Do you fly your whole team over from KL right?
The MYFM birthday bash is 100 percent conceptualised and produced by our Sarawak Team. Only the MYFM Breakfast Announcers Jack Lim, Gan Mei Yan and Jeff Lim will be flying in for the concert from KL.
The script is written by Ai Sing, one of our top announcers in Sarawak and the station’s Music Executive.
The rest of our Sarawak crew is working on everything from staging, managing, lighting, audio, visual effect and everything else.