Singapore Media Academy opens new premises at Clarke Quay
By S Ramesh, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 18 November 2009 1133 hrs

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SINGAPORE: Media professionals in Singapore can now turn to a one-stop training centre to upgrade their skills.

Wholly-owned by MediaCorp, the Singapore Media Academy (SMA) at Clarke Quay, Riverside Point, will also allow mid-career professionals to undergo training to enter the media industry.

The academy was opened on Wednesday by Minister of State for Manpower Lee Yi Shyan who noted that it has already started training programmes in new media sales and scriptwriting since February.

The academy aims to provide best-in-class training at highly subsidised rates for aspiring talents.

Chua Foo Yong, managing director of SMA, said: "Quite a number of our trainers are practitioners from overseas. Recently we had an interactive TV course and we flew in a BBC trainer who is able to teach in this area."

Singapore's media industry employs nearly 7,200 workers and the Singapore Media Academy, which will serve as an important continuing education and training centre and well equipped with the latest cutting-edge technology, will help media professionals to continuously upgrade themselves so that Singapore's media landscape remains dynamic and vibrant.

Among the facilities are a high-definition TV production studio - the first in Singapore to be used for training - and a customised radio production console which allows for training in presentation, operations and maintenance.

Lucas Chow, chairman of SMA and CEO of MediaCorp, said: "You look at the transformation of the media industry and we are at the crossroads, meaning that while the traditional media that we are still familiar with are still very much relevant, we are also seeing new media like online and gaming. That poses a different kind of challenge to media professionals."

"When the next generation broadband network is available, we foresee that the way that television programmes, radio programmes and magazines production will be changed. And now you have interaction and so on," he added.

"You have to constantly keep yourself upgraded in terms of the things happening. We have been talking about convergence for a long time but now the condition is very favourable for such convergence that will happen."

Mr Chow went on to say: "There are already several tertiary educations providing media training and we see this as a finishing school, which means you really come and put on the final touches and get ready to face the real world.

"The other part of it is that you are already a media professional and you are looking forward to upgrade your skills. As you know, things are going high definition and digital and technologies of the media industry continue to evolve and we use this as a platform for the training.

"We hope that SMA will provide substantial amount of training to professionals in MediaCorp as well as other professionals working outside of MediaCorp but who are also in the media industry."

The academy has already rolled out four professional conversion programmes for 40 trainees from 13 companies.

Commenting on the academy's new facilities, Chan Heng Kee, chief executive of Workforce Development Agency, said: "This provides very good opportunity and infrastructure, particularly for small and medium sized enterprises which do not have the expertise or resources to set up their own training facility, and some of it would come in the form of innovative approaches like making it into more flexible modular training."

The opening ceremony was hosted by Prime Time Morning Show presenter Steven Chia and beamed "live" to guests in-house.

To mark the opening of the new centre, MediaCorp launched The Creative Video Awards with four categories to be presented in January 2010.

- CNA/ir