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France 24 launches in Malaysia on HyppTV
MUMBAI: Telekom Malaysia‘s pay- television service HyppTV has inked a carriage deal with French international news channel France 24 which will see the channel being aired via TM‘s high-speed broadband service, UniFi.
HyyppTV executive vice president new media Jeremy Kung said the company expected to attract about 2,000 expatriates within two years and about 20,000 university and college students going forward. “France 24 will complement other international and local news channels that are available on HyyppTV, which offers 87 channels consisting of 19 free channels, 33 premium channels, 17 video-on-demand genres and 18 interactive channels,” he told reporters after the launch of the channel.
Kung said the targeted audience-cum-UniFi subscribers would be French expatriates, Malaysian public, particularly the French-speaking group, as well as French-speaking tourists such as from Belgium.
France 24 Asia-Pacific distribution director Brice Bertrand added, “Our first-tier target is French expatriates in Malaysia. There are some 4,000 French people living in Malaysia currently. Second-tier target market would be the Malaysian public and lastly tourism but not limited to French but also Canadian, Belgians and Swiss.”
France 24 is broadcast in French, English and Arabic. It has reached 245 million households worldwide and attracted 45 million TV viewers each week.
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With 57 per cent single new users, Ashley Madison rebrands as discreet dating platform
Platform says majority of new members now identify as single
INDIA: Ashley Madison is shedding the “married-dating” label that defined it for two decades, repositioning itself as a platform for discreet dating in what it calls the post-social media age.
The rebrand, unveiled in India on 27 February, 2026, marks a structural shift in business model and identity. Once synonymous with married dating, the company now describes itself as the “premier destination for discreet dating” under a new tagline: Where Desire Meets Discretion.
The pivot is data-driven. Internal figures show that 57 per cent of global sign-ups between 1 January and 31 December, 2025 identified as single: a notable departure from the platform’s married core. The company argues that its community has already evolved beyond its original positioning.
“In an age where our lives have been constantly put on public display, privacy has become the new luxury,” said Ashley Madison chief strategy officer Paul Keable. He framed the platform’s offering as “ethical discretion” for singles, separated, divorced and non-monogamous users seeking private connections.
The shift also taps into wider digital fatigue. A global survey conducted by YouGov for Ashley Madison, covering 13,071 adults across Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US, found mounting discomfort with hyper-public online lives.
Among dating app users, 30 per cent cited constant swiping and messaging as a source of fatigue, while 24 per cent pointed to pressure to curate public-facing profiles and early personal disclosure. Some 27 per cent said fears of screenshots or information being shared contributed to exhaustion; an equal share cited unwanted attention.
The retreat from oversharing appears broader. According to the survey, 46 per cent of adults actively try to keep most aspects of their life private online. Only 8 per cent feel comfortable sharing most aspects publicly, while 35 per cent say they are becoming more selective about what they disclose.
Ashley Madison is betting that this cultural recalibration towards controlled visibility can be monetised. By doubling down on privacy infrastructure and reframing itself around discretion rather than infidelity, the company is attempting to convert reputational baggage into a premium proposition.
