Capital 958 (Chinese: 958城市頻道; lit. '958 City Channel') is a Mandarin-language radio station in Singapore. Owned by the state-owned broadcaster Mediacorp, it broadcasts a classic hits format.
The station's origins can be traced back to Radio Malaya Singapore's Green Network—which broadcast programming in Chinese dialects. The station later became the Chinese Service of Radio Television Singapore, and began to be relayed on 95.8 FM on 15 July 1967. It became known as Radio 3 on 1 January 1982, and later 95.8 City Sounds on 16 December 1991. The station was simulcast on AM and FM until 31 December 1993.
In a 2022 survey, Nielsen ranked Capital 958 as Singapore's fourth-highest rated radio station.[1]
History
Although programming in Chinese dialects was carried by the extant Singaporean radio station in its several incarnations from 1 March 1937 to 22 December 1945, it wasn't until 23 December 1945 where a de facto separate service in Chinese and Indian dialects, the Red Network, was created.[2] Strictly speaking, an all-Chinese service was announced in December 1950, with the launch date set for 1 January 1951. The new network was known as the Green Network.[3] One of the aims of the new service was to counter Communist propaganda in the region (alongside the Malay service). The station broadcast on 72 metres (7200 kilocycles, later redefined to 680 kHz on AMmedium wave) from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. nightly,[4] and was moved to 675 kHz on 23 November 1978 to conform with the Geneva Frequency Plan of 1975.
The station began FM transmissions on 95.8 MHz on 15 July 1967,[5][6] and was renamed Radio 3 on 1 January 1982.[7] With the launch of the contemporarymandopop station YES 933 on 1 January 1990,[8] Radio 3 pivoted its programming to include more infotainment programmes during the daytime and early-evening hours. A new block of arts and cultural programming would now air from 8 to 10 p.m., including a programme of news bulletins in Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hainanese, Hakka and Fuzhounese at 8 p.m. (each of which lasting three to five minutes), and Chinese operas.[9][10]
The station rebranded as 95.8 City Channel (城市频道, initially promoted in English-language marketing as "95.8City Sounds" and later "Capital Radio") on 16 December 1991, with no change in format. SBC stated that the new name was intended to evoke the essence of "city life".[11] The AM signals of all SBC stations were discontinued on 1 January 1994.[12]
In preparation for 24-hour broadcasts in December 1994, City Sounds recruited six new deejays: three of them from mainland China. The new deejays were under 30. The station also trained the China-born deejays to speak clearly to make them understandable to local listeners.[13] RCS also had problems replacing its current batch of dialect newsreaders,[10] with most of its newsreaders in their late 50s and 60s.[14] Although the news scripts were the same as Mandarin, the script readers would need to improvise due to the differences in the structures of each dialect.[10] The dialect news broadcasts also suffered from a lack of funding and professional newsreaders, with listeners preferring dialect songs than dialect news.[10]
On 8 February 2017, the station moved from its long-time home of Caldecott Hill to the new Mediacorp campus at One-north.
