The Significance of Post-World War II Cable Radio Network Rediffusion Singapore’s Dialect Program to the Sinophone Community (2024/02/20)

Despite being an entertainment radio network, Rediffusion stressed its service as providing its listeners with that three specific focuses: news, education and entertainment. The significance of Rediffusion cannot be overstated, Professor Tan pointed out. Shortly after its launch, Rediffusion became an indispensable medium in the general media landscape of Singapore, witnessing and recording Singapore’s road to independence, nation building and decolonization. That being said, Professor Tan elucidated that Rediffusion suffered setbacks in terms of its subscription numbers after serving the Singapore audience for more than three decades. There are two main factors for this. Firstly, with television gradually becoming a more widespread medium, the support and need for radio broadcasts plummeted. In the 1960s, many citizens pivoted towards the newly created Radio Television Singapore (later renamed to Singapore Broadcasting Corporation, SBC) because the state radio station was free. Secondly, to the detriment of all the diverse dialects present at the time in Singapore, its government adopted a policy that promoted Mandarin as the default mother for all ethnic Chinese Singapore. In other words, programs in dialects were limited and Rediffusion was particularly targeted with guidelines (or rather “recommendations” as the government called it), specifying the kind of broadcasts they were supposed to do. And indeed, Professor Tan expounded that although Rediffusion kept some successful dialect programs, they did increase their Mandarin broadcasts from the early 1980s onwards. This was also motivated by Lee Kuan Yew—the first Prime Minister of Singapore—who emphasized that during times of uncertainty and for a young country that had just recently gained independence, foregrounding the common (i.e. Mandarin) rather than the particular (i.e. dialects) was pivotal. He believed that learning and focusing on Mandarin would lessen the burden of students as the mastery of Mandarin alongside English would make them competitive in the future as they pursue careers involving economic and political connections to China that was opening it door to global trade. Interestingly enough and to the surprise of Snowden, Rediffusion initial increase in Mandarin programs led to a soaring subscription number and, hence, dispelled Snowden’s misgivings about the government’s plans to put greater emphasis on Mandarin instead of the dialects. After all, increasing the revenue through this new market is of utmost importance for a private business. In short, Rediffusion had to deal with two challenges with the introduction of the “Speak More Mandarin, Less Dialect” policy: the governmental guidelines and the needs and demands of its listeners. Only by dealing with both, could Rediffusion continue to operate.