Singapore broadcaster Mediacorp is creating new joint radio and television divisions for its Malay and Indian stations.

The Malay Broadcast Division will be headed by Zakiah Halim, an industry veteran with more than 28 years experience.

Halim becomes Senior Vice President of the new department, which includes TV channel Suria and radio stations Warna 94.2FM and Ria 89.7FM.

Commenting on the restructuring, Halim said: “With this newly combined structure, it will definitely provide a compelling 360⁰ content experience that caters to the needs and lifestyles of our consumers in this digital age.

“We will build on our production and multiplatform capabilities to yield efficiencies and synergies that will benefit our audiences and partners.”

Mediacorp’s Indian broadcasts will see similar restructuring with the Tamil language television channel Vasantham and Oli 96.8FM coming under one department.

The Indian Broadcast Division will be lead by Senior Vice President Dr Chitra Rajaram.

Dr Rajaram said the two stations were looking to produce complimentary programming and said he believed that “a dedicated ethnic sales team would open doors for us to package exciting cross platform products and advertising bundles for our clients.”

Malay is the mother tongue of around 12 percent of Singaporeans. Just 3 percent speak Tamil while the majority claim Chinese or English as their mother tongue.

A Mediacorp spokesperson told Asia Radio Today that the restructuring meant no changes to English or Chinese stations.