MBC to rebrand national TV and Radio

Maldives Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), the national public broadcasting service provider, has decided to rebrand its two platforms, the Television Maldives (TVM) and the Voice of Maldives (VOM) radio.

An announcement issued by the MBC on the 7th of this month invited bids from parties interested in preparing a Branding Manual for the Corporation and rebranding the TV and Radio channels operated by the Corporation.

Muhammad “Mondhu” Asif, Chief Executive Officer of the TVM, told Sun today that some interested parties had already submitted their bids, and that the process was ongoing. He said that “there are no plans to rename the channels as far as I know, but there would be changes to the channel brand”. He said that the Youth TV, a channel operated by the Maldives National Broadcasting Corporation (MNBC), which operated the TVM and VOM before MBC took over, would be re-launched with some changes.

While Mondhu said that he did not know of any plans to change the names of TVM and VOM, reports from another source has confirmed that discussions are ongoing about changing the names of both the channels, to Dhivehi TV and Dhivehi Radio respectively.

MBC was a statutory body created a couple of years ago to operate the state media outlets. However, Mohamed Nasheed, the then President, refused to abide by the Parliament Act creating MBC, and refused to hand over the TVM and VOM to MBC. Instead, Nasheed’s government created the MNBC to run the outlets. MNBC operated TVM as MNBC One, and the VOM as Raajje Radio.

However, when Nasheed fell from power on the 7th of February this year and current President Dr. Waheed assumed office, one of the first decisions of the new President was to “free the state media from executive control” and hand over TVM and VOM to the statutory body created to operate them. with the change, the names TVM and VOM were also reinstated.