Oh my. RTM has made blunder after blunder during the live broadcast of the ASEAN Summit earlier today.
First, it named the Indonesian President as Joko Widodo instead of his successor, Prabowo Subianto. Then it referred to the Singaporean Prime Minister as Lee Hsien Loong instead of Lawrence Wong, and then as an icing to the cake, it named Thai Prime Minister as Srettha Thavisin instead of Anutin Charnvirakul, who took office just last month.
It just goes to show — while nobody remembers you when you do anything right, have one bad day, and suddenly everyone remembers that it’s been years since they last heard of you.
Anyone remembers RTM?
When I was younger, RTM1 and RTM2 were the only channels we had. Then came TV3, NTV7, and later, cable and satellite TV. Fast forward to the age of YouTube and TikTok, and ask the younger generation about RTM — you might get a blank stare, as if you’d just mentioned someone they met at a party a year ago, when they’re the sort to go to parties every week.
But then today I heard that RTM had made a series of faux pas, and suddenly I was travelling down memory lane, remembering the TV channel that was a staple of my younger years.
It seems that to me that RTM today might be caught in a time trap — stuck at least one year behind. That could explain why it named not one, not two, but three ASEAN leaders wrongly during its live broadcast of the summit’s opening ceremony.
Either that, or it’s a symptom of something more subtle: the syndrome of invisibility. When a media organisation produces content that few notice, motivation slips. When nobody’s paying attention, even the smallest details — like the names of world leaders — start to blur.
If that’s what happened here, I can’t entirely blame them. The media landscape today is brutally competitive. Attention spans are shrinking, algorithms rule the day, and legacy broadcasters like RTM — once kings of the airwaves — are now fighting for relevance in a digital jungle.
RTM was made for a different world — one with far less competition and far more patient audiences. But the world has changed, and in the media business, you either evolve or go extinct.
Still, I hope this blunder will be a blessing in disguise for RTM. When news spreads that RTM keeps getting official facts wrong, maybe people will tune in — out of curiosity or amusement — and give the channel a spike in views and a second chance to reinvent itself.
Everybody in life could just be one break shy of a breakthrough.
The difference between the dinosaurs that evolved into birds and the ones that went extinct millions of years ago might just have been the number of breaks they got. The ones that got a break survived and thrived, while the ones that did not bit the dust.
Now that the ground has shifted beneath RTM’s feet, I hope it takes the way of the birds — and evolves into something that can exist and thrive in the present.
As for its mistakes, I am sure no one really cares - one of the good part about being invisible is that no one really cares about what you are doing - no one cares even if you got it right every day, and they won't really care if you got it wrong someday as well.
I am quite sure that angry ambassadors won't be calling RTM office to demand for an explanation.
But to the extent that its blunder receives attention, I hope it will be beneficial for RTM- in other words, may its mistake be the sort that will be able to get back on the attention of the public.
May this blunder be the wings it needs to soar.
TheRealNehruism (nehru.sathiamoorthy@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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