NTV7

The station was launched on 7 April 1998 under the entity of Natseven TV Sdn Bhd by businessman Mohd Effendi Norwawi, broadcasting daily from 6 am to 1 am the next day. At the time of its establishment, its headquarters was located at Hicom-Glenmarie Industrial Park in Shah Alam, Selangor. It also had a studio in Kuching, Sarawak.[1]

Test card used by NTV7 during the channel's downtime.

In 2005, Media Prima Berhad announced its acquisition of NTV7 under a price of RM90 million, effectively making the latter one of its subsidiaries. As a result, it operates from Sri Pentas, Petaling Jaya from that year onward along with three other private television stations in Malaysia: TV3, 8TV and TV9.[2]

In its early history, the station offered a wide variety of programming which targets the Malaysian urban demographic including drama, comedy, entertainment, game shows, children's programmes, anime, documentaries and movies. There were also news bulletins in English, Mandarin and Malay through the 7 Edition, Mandarin 7, and Edisi 7 brands, respectively.

Introduction of home shopping block (2016–present)

Since 1 April 2016, a teleshopping block bought by the Korean conglomerate CJ Group through subsidiary CJ E&M Co Ltd called CJ WOW Shop (now Wow Shop) has been broadcasting across Media Prima channels. Several Media Prima channels (especially NTV7 and TV9) are more affected by the changes. It attracted public criticism on social media as a large part of the daytime schedule has been replaced by the block, in which these slots had been previously dedicated to reruns, religious programming and kids programming.[3]

On 1 November 2020, CJ Wow Shop was rebranded into Wow Shop after Media Prima bought the remaining 49% stake in the teleshopping network previously held by CJ Group.[4]

From 5 March 2018, Media Prima attempted a new brand positioning for NTV7. The channel tried to target “Modern Malaysia” as a contemporary station through its new content line-up, including new Turkish Telenovelas; as well as its new slogan Feel It.[5][6][7][8][9] The relaunch saw major changes as it became a dominated English-Malay language channel, with the channel name read as "n-t-v-tujuh" instead of "n-t-v-seven." Also, infomercial programming was reduced upon the channel's rebranding.

Upon the March 2018 rebranding, Chinese content on this channel was reduced to selected Chinese dramas from Hong Kong and China along with Mandarin news bulletins, with much of the remainder transferred to sister channel 8TV (which also attempted to reposition as Media Prima's sole all-Chinese channel on the same day). Originally, Mandarin 7 was supposed to be cancelled in May 2018 to complete its plan of moving all Chinese content to a single dedicated channel. However, when the 2018 General Election occurred, the bulletin became Malaysia's second-most watched after TV3's Buletin Utama (the said spot was formerly held by Berita TV9). Due to the Chinese community's positive response, Media Prima decided to reshuffle NTV7's news programming in June instead of axing Chinese news. In its current format, only one news bulletin per language is aired on the channel with a single Mandarin newshour, while retaining half-hour editions in Malay and English.

The rebrand caused confusion among viewers, particularly Chinese communities who tuned in to NTV7 after finding out that most of its former programmes were moved to 8TV. Overall Chinese viewership were believed to be surprisingly lower.

As a result, on 31 December 2018, former CEO of Media Prima Television Networks, Johan Ishak, said that the Mandarin variant of CJ Wow Shop will be broadcast on the channel and replace Malay variant.[10] The move was part of the company's restructuring NTV7 by axed English and Malay-language shows, dropped the channel nomenclature, moved some (including those from TV9) to the main TV3. It also brought back the channel's perception as a Chinese channel; yet the channel's Mandarin, Malay and English news bulletins remained unchanged.

Reruns of axed NTV7 shows were then aired on TV9 after the former's retreat while slogan "Feel it" was removed.

Mandarin 7 discontinuation (2020)

On 7 June 2020, Mandarin 7 aired its final edition and was merged into 8TV Mandarin News the following day. 8TV Mandarin News was also extended to one hour due to high ratings during the Movement Control Order (MCO) and COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia.[11]

On 1 November 2020, CEO of Media Prima Television Networks, Dato' Khairul Anwar Salleh announced that NTV7 will be targeted for ages 15-28 by focusing on magazines, information and current affairs programs to meet the public needs, while Korean dramas have stopped airing and all Chinese programmes have finally been integrated to 8TV. Korean variety show Running Man remains on this channel alongside with homeshopping block Wow Shop.[12]

On 30 December 2020, the slogan "Feel It" was restored from the on-air promos after 2 years of channel's absence of tagline due to the former perception as a Chinese channel. It was first seen in the 1-hour extension of 7 Edition and current affairs programme Topik@7.