How Mediacorp stops livestreams from freezing at key moments

It’s the moment of truth in a World Cup final. Lionel Messi is about to score, but just as he shoots, your stream freezes. It’s a digital-age frustration Mediacorp is working hard to eliminate.

Behind the seamless delivery of live sports, breaking news and on-demand dramas on apps such as meWatch and Channel News Asia (CNA) is an engineering team that has transformed its operations from reactive troubleshooting to pre-emptive problem-solving.

For the past decade, the national media network has worked with observability platform supplier New Relic to monitor its digital ecosystem, ensuring that its apps remain stable and responsive for users in one of the world’s most digitally connected markets.

“Before we had New Relic, it was like a black box,” said Desmond Nah, assistant lead for app development and management at Mediacorp. “We would only find out about issues from comments on app stores, public call-ins, or when our own developers stumbled upon something.”

The situation is very different today. Nah’s team now relies on New Relic’s observability platform to keep Mediacorp’s digital services humming along. The platform monitors the performance of the broadcaster’s mobile, TV and web applications in real time, delivering deep insights into everything from app launch times and server responses to crashes.

This has enabled Mediacorp to raise its average mobile app crash-free rate from 97% to 99.5%, while maintaining an average four-star rating on app stores and fostering a culture of performance and reliability among developers.

Nah said the ability to diagnose issues before they escalate is critical. When an alert is triggered, such as when an app’s crash rate exceeds a threshold set by the team, developers receive a detailed log of the user’s session leading up to the failure.

“It’s very easy for a developer to pinpoint an issue,” he said. “When they see a line of code, they immediately know if they made a mistake in the last release or if there’s a new issue with the platform, like Apple or Google.”

Nah said using the New Relic platform has helped save more than two hours of developer time each week that was previously spent on manual debugging and troubleshooting. That time is now spent on developing new features and improving products.

For viewers, this translates to a better user experience. During major live events like the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix, the Olympics, or the World Cup, the stability of livestreams is crucial.

“It cannot be a case where the moment Messi is going to score a goal, the stream hangs,” Nah said. “Not having that kind of experience is particularly important for the fans.”

Nah noted that in a competitive media landscape, app performance is directly tied to business outcomes. A stable meWatch app encourages viewers to consume more content, while speed is critical for news platforms.

“For a digital news app like CNA, delivering a push notification or breaking news faster than our competitors is important. When other competitors deliver something and we only deliver five seconds later, it’s not news anymore.”

This focus on digital excellence has contributed to Mediacorp’s wider success, including its apps winning numerous digital awards and the company being named Broadcaster of the Year at the World Media Festivals Television and Corporate Media Awards in May 2025.

In the future, Nah hopes to see artificial intelligence (AI) play an even greater role in maintaining app performance. “What I hope for is for the AI to evolve in a way that it can recommend how to resolve a problem, or even predict what might happen when we roll out a new build,” he said. “That would really help us to further improve the user experience.”