Central (TV channel)
Singaporean television channel
Central was a Singaporean free-to-air terrestrial television channel in Singapore, owned by state media conglomerate MediaCorp.
The channel was established on 1 September 1995 by Singapore Television Twelve as Premiere 12, an UHF spin-off of Channel 12 focused on arts, cultural, sports, and English-language entertainment programmes. Premiere 12 inherited the previous format of Channel 12, which concurrently relaunched with a multilingual format focused on Malay and Tamil programmes.
On 30 January 2000, the channel relaunched as Central; the channel's schedule was divided into three different strands, with children's programmes under the Kids Central strand, Tamil-language programmes under the Vasantham Central strand, and arts and cultural programming under the Arts Central strand. On 19 October 2008, MediaCorp discontinued Central and spun its programming off into the new channels Okto and Vasantham.
History
Premiere 12
On 26 August 1994, ahead of the bill that suggested the planned privatisation of the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation, the Minister for Information and the Arts (Brigadier General) George Yeo announced the plan for the creation of a fourth free-to-air television channel in Singapore, offering a predominantly cultural lineup. Under this plan, arts and cultural programming would be spun off from Channel 12 into a new channel, broadcasting on the UHF band due to the lack of VHF slots available. Tamil programmes would be moved from Channel 8 to Channel 12, so that 8 would shift exclusively to Chinese-language programming, and 12 would focus on Malay and Tamil language programmes.
On 27 July 1995, Television Twelve (later renamed Singapore Television Twelve)—who became responsible for Channel 12 after privatization—received the greenlight from the Singapore Broadcasting Authority to broadcast a UHF channel. Test transmissions began on 1 August 1995, with trial programming running nightly from 7 to 9 pm and the test pattern filling the rest.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Central (TV channel)” is singaporean television channel. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Central, channel and Singaporean, not as a finished interpretation.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6805393. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1995, 2000, 2008 and 1994.
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This entry incorporates text from “Central (TV channel)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.