Ep 146.1: I didn't know I was poor! | Woon Tai Ho (Channel NewsAsia founder & Bestselling Author - George Yeo trilogy, Soul of Ink, Riot Green)

Growing up, Woon Tai Ho - Channel NewsAsia founder &
Bestselling Author of books like the George Yeo trilogy, Soul of
Ink, Riot Green- didn’t know he was poor.


Until he invited his friends over and was asked questions like:


Where’s your phone?


Where’s your sofa?


None of which he had.


Which made him realise that actually, he was pretty poor.  


But he was never ashamed of it.


When his sister invited him to stay at the house she was working
at as a domestic helper, that changed his world.


“I couldn’t believe it, the way they stayed… these people had a
dimension of luxury that I didn’t know about. So I told myself, I
need to work very hard.”


And work very hard he did. 


We know Channel News Asia as one of the preeminent TV news
channels in Asia, but that wasn’t always the case. As Tai Ho
shares, the earliest days of CNA was very much a ‘wait and see’
game.


It was hardly easy too. 


“Television is a very, very hungry animal. A news channel is a
very, very hungry animal. Every hour, every minute, every second
needs content. Otherwise it's black.”


So how did Tai Ho build CNA from the ground up?


Position CNA amidst other giants like CNN & the BBC?


Gain support from the likes of former Singapore foreign minister,
George Yeo?


Handle challenges like when he was summoned to China for their
coverage of Falun Gong?


You’ll have to listen to Part 1 of this STIMY episode to find
out.


Part 2 will come out next Sunday!


Highlights:


3:00 Would you consider yourself successful?

6:34 Family

8:27 Becoming a chef?

11:00 Singapore is a pretty good place!

13:29 “I never thought about being the best”

14:20 “When I was a kid, I didn’t know I was poor”

15:50 Mediacorp

16:53 Founding Channel News Asia

20:48 The reality of founding a news channel (that most
people don’t know)

23:09 How do you define “quality content”?

24:28 Establishing the boundaries for quality

26:01 Looking at competitors to figure out CNA’s value
proposition

28:33 No government support?!

31:14 Pushing the Singapore government’s perspective?

34:32 Getting into trouble with the Chinese government

37:56 Knowing which stories and perspective to put forward

40:51 Time to move on? 






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Show notes: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/146


 Weekly STIMY Newsletter on the art of storytelling +
building your personal brand (+snippets of STIMY
behind-the-scenes): https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/acd5bd1062