The Asian Television Awards (ATA) lost its strongest television supporter this morning when Mediacorp chief executive, Loke Kheng Tham, exited the ATA advisory board. The move comes seven months after Mediacorp won the ATA's 2017 Terrestrial Broadcaster of the Year award.

Tham’s decision is likely to bring to an end to Mediacorp’s heavy involvement with the awards for almost a quarter of a century, including winning the Terrestrial Broadcaster of the Year award 14 times.

The latest development is being seen as part of a broader initiative by Singapore agencies to distance themselves from the awards event, operated by Active Marketing and Events Pte Ltd (formerly known as Asian Television Awards Pte Ltd) and the awards chairman, Raymond Wong.

In May this year, the Singapore government’s Info-Comms Media Development Authority (IMDA) said it was ending its multi-year sponsorship of the awards from this year, effectively axing the event from the official agenda of the high-profile annual Singapore Media Festival (SMF).

It is still unclear how the gap in the Festival agenda will be filled.

Today’s development followsmonths of legal actionby former awards vendor, activeTV, which is still owed S$300,000/US$219,931 for services during last year’s Awards, as well asaction by Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower (MOM)for non-payment of mandatory Central Provident Fund (CPF) contributions for local staffers.

Wong has been ordered by the Singapore High Court to appear on3 Augustto answer questions about the April judgement ordering him to pay activeTV. activeTV has as of today received no payment.

In a short statement released this morning, Mediacorp said it was “committed to encouraging strong working relationships between companies as well as fair and progressive business practices that support the success of stakeholders across our creative ecosystem. As questions about the business dealings around ATA persist, Loke Kheng is relinquishing her position on the ATA advisory board”.

Entries for this year’s awards closenext Friday(20 July). The awards were supposed to have been held in Singapore over two nightson Wednesday(5 Dec) andThursday(6 Dec). Dates have now been removed from the site, replaced with aline saying that “actual details will be released closer to the date”.

As of1.30pmtoday, Tham was still listed as one of the members of the heavy-weight industry board, which also includes Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation president, Bu Yu; Youku Tudou SVP/Tudou.com president, Yang Weidong; industry veteran, Man Shu Sum, who is listed as the chief of judges for the awards; Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) GM, S.K. Cheong; and GMA Network’s CEO, Felipe Gozon, among others. Two of the advisory board members’ details are out of date, including Fotini Paraskakis, the former managing director of Endemol Shine Group Asia, who exited the role earlier this year when Endemol downsized its Singapore-based regional production office; and DJ Lee, who moved to the U.S. earlier this year to run CJ ENM’s U.S. business. Both are listed under their old titles.

The inaugural awards were held in 1996, and rolled out with Mediacorp as an anchor participant. Like others, including the IMDA (and its predecessor the Media Development Authority), the broadcaster has never been stingy with its praise for the event. On the awards website, Mediacorp congratulates the awards team “for keeping the awards current and relevant amidst the ever changing trends in the media landscape”.

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