Growing up, Woon Tai Ho - Channel NewsAsia founder & Bestselling Author of books like the George Yeo trilogy, Soul of Ink, Riot Green- didn’t know he was poor.

Until he invited his friends over and was asked questions like:

❓ Where’s your phone?

❓ Where’s your sofa?

None of which he had.

Which made him realise that actually, he was pretty poor. 😅

But he was never ashamed of it.

When his sister invited him to stay at the house she was working at as a domestic helper, that changed his world.

“I couldn’t believe it, the way they stayed… these people had a dimension of luxury that I didn’t know about. So I told myself, I need to work very hard.”

And work very hard he did.

We know Channel News Asia as one of the preeminent TV news channels in Asia, but that wasn’t always the case. As Tai Ho shares, the earliest days of CNA was very much a ‘wait and see’ game.

It was hardly easy too.

“Television is a very, very hungry animal. A news channel is a very, very hungry animal. Every hour, every minute, every second needs content. Otherwise it's black.”

❓So how did Tai Ho build CNA from the ground up?

❓Position CNA amidst other giants like CNN & the BBC?

❓ Gain support from the likes of former Singapore foreign minister, George Yeo?

❓Handle challenges like when he was summoned to China for their coverage of Falun Gong?

You’ll have to listen to Part 1 of this STIMY episode to find out. 😉

Part 2 will come out next Sunday!

Highlights:

• 3:00 Would you consider yourself successful?
• 6:34 Family
• 8:27 Becoming a chef?
• 11:00 Singapore is a pretty good place!
• 13:29 “I never thought about being the best”
• 14:20 “When I was a kid, I didn’t know I was poor”
• 15:50 Mediacorp
• 16:53 Founding Channel News Asia
• 20:48 The reality of founding a news channel (that most people don’t know)
• 23:09 How do you define “quality content”?
• 24:28 Establishing the boundaries for quality
• 26:01 Looking at competitors to figure out CNA’s value proposition
• 28:33 No government support?!
• 31:14 Pushing the Singapore government’s perspective?
• 34:32 Getting into trouble with the Chinese government
• 37:56 Knowing which stories and perspective to put forward
• 40:51 Time to move on?

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📍Show notes: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/146

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