Malaysia TV Online Streaming
Most news you hear on the radio has passed through two newsrooms before it reaches you. An agency gathers the story and files it; a broadcaster then rewrites it and reads it out.
Bernama Radio removes the second step. It is run by BERNAMA, the national news agency that supplies much of what the rest of Malaysian media publishes, so what you are hearing is the source reporting directly.
The live stream is playing on this page — free, with nothing to install and no account required.
The Agency Behind the Station
BERNAMA was created by an Act of Parliament in 1967 and began operating the following year. Its work is wholesale rather than retail: gather news across the country, then distribute it by wire to newspapers, broadcasters and other subscribers in Malaysia and abroad.
It files in several languages — Malay, English, Chinese, Tamil, Spanish and Arabic — and runs a newsroom of a few hundred journalists, photographers and camera crews out of Wisma Bernama on Jalan Tun Razak in Kuala Lumpur.
The agency is government-owned but structured as a statutory corporation, an arrangement meant to give its journalism room to operate on its own terms.
Malaysia’s First All-News Station
The station went on air in September 2007 under the name Radio24, and took the Bernama Radio name in 2016.
Its claim at launch was a genuine one: Malaysia’s first all-news radio station. Music stations carry bulletins between songs; this was built the other way round, with news as the entire product.
BERNAMA extended the same idea to television the following year with Bernama TV.
News on the Quarter Hour
The schedule runs on a repeating cycle rather than a lineup of named shows.
Full bulletins land on the hour, with shorter news highlights every quarter hour in between. Around those sit breaking news as it arrives, traffic updates, weather, and stock market reports.
Talk-back programming fills out the rest, which gives listeners somewhere to answer back rather than only receive.
The practical effect is that you never have to time your listening. Tune in at almost any point and the next update is only a few minutes away.
Three Languages on One Dial
Bernama Radio broadcasts mainly in Malay and English.
Tamil programming was added in 2017, carried in weekend slots between 11am and 1pm and again from 11pm to midnight. It is a smaller share of the week, but it widens the station’s reach in a country where the news audience was never going to be monolingual.
Where It Broadcasts
On air, the station reaches three main areas:
- 93.9 MHz — Klang Valley
- 100.9 MHz — Kuching, Sarawak
- 107.9 MHz — Kota Kinabalu, Sabah
It is also carried on MYTV channel 711 for anyone using digital terrestrial television.
Beyond the Three Cities
Those transmitters leave a great deal of the country outside the broadcast footprint — Penang, Johor Bahru, Ipoh, Kuantan and most places in between.
The stream closes that gap. It runs in a browser on a phone, tablet or laptop, with no receiver to tune and no app to install. For a national news service working from only three transmitters, that counts for more than it would at a local music station.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who runs Bernama Radio?
BERNAMA, Malaysia's national news agency, from its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.
What languages is it broadcast in?
Mainly Malay and English, with Tamil programming in weekend slots.
What frequency is Bernama Radio on?
93.9 MHz in the Klang Valley, 100.9 MHz in Kuching and 107.9 MHz in Kota Kinabalu.
Was the station called something else before?
It was. It launched as Radio24 in 2007 and became Bernama Radio in 2016.
What makes it different from other stations?
It is an all-news station rather than a music station with bulletins, and the reporting comes from the agency that supplies much of the rest of Malaysian media.
How often does the news come round?
Full bulletins on the hour, with shorter highlights every quarter hour in between.
Does listening cost anything?
It does not — no subscription and no sign-up.
Can I listen from outside those three areas?
That is exactly what the stream is for. The transmitters cover three regions; the online feed has no such limit.
Conclusion
There is a particular usefulness in hearing news from the organisation that gathered it, without a middle layer deciding what survives the edit. That is what Bernama Radio offers, and the quarter-hourly rhythm makes it easy to leave running in the background.
Keep it on while you work or drive, and you will never be more than fifteen minutes behind the day.
