TV Okey Live Streaming – Watch RTM TV Okey Online
Sabah and Sarawak hold about a fifth of Malaysia’s population and more than half its land. For decades they had almost no television made for them.
TV Okey is the correction. Broadcast in Iban, Kadazandusun, Bajau and other Bornean languages, it is the only national channel built around East Malaysia. The live feed sits above, free to watch.
Full TV Malaysia Channel List
Below is the complete lineup. Pick a channel and start watching.
LIVE1TV3
LIVE2DS
LIVE3TV1
LIVE4DK
LIVE5TV2
LIVE6TV9
LIVE78TV
LIVE8TO
LIVE9BR
LIVE10SR
LIVE11TA
LIVE12BT
LIVE13ST
LIVE14TI
LIVE15TVS
LIVE16USI
LIVE17TAI
LIVE18TIC
LIVE19ST
LIVE20RI
LIVE21NW
LIVE22RK
LIVE23MYS
LIVE24FM
LIVE25CNA
LIVE26ARI
LIVE27WF
LIVE28AF
LIVE29AF
LIVE30BF
LIVE31EF
LIVE32FF
LIVE33HF
LIVE34IKI
LIVE35KF
LIVE36MF
LIVE37MF
LIVE38MF
LIVE39NF
LIVE40SF
LIVE41RF
LIVE42SF
LIVE43SF
LIVE44SF
LIVE45TFAbout the Channel
- Full name
- RTM TV Okey
- Operator
- Radio Televisyen Malaysia
- Owner
- Government of Malaysia
- Launched
- 2018, in Kota Kinabalu
- myFreeview channel
- 110
- Astro
- 109
- Picture
- HD
- Broadcast hours
- 24 hours
- Focus
- Sabah, Sarawak and Bornean communities
- Official platform
- RTMKlik
What the Name Means
OKEY is not just a friendly word. It stands for Opportunity, Knowledge, Exciting Yours.
The minister who announced it said the name was picked because it was unpretentious and easy to remember – which tells you something about who the channel was built for. No grand branding, no abstract slogan. Just a word people already use every day in both states.
Seventy-Nine Communities, Two Languages on Air
The case for this channel is best made with numbers.
- Ethnic groups in Sabah
- Around 52
- Ethnic groups in Sarawak
- Around 27
- Languages with daily TV slots before 2018
- 2
- Frequency of those slots
- Twice a day
Iban and Kadazan had short daily windows on RTM. Every other Bornean language was confined to radio, if it appeared at all. For a region of that size and diversity, national television offered close to nothing.
TV Okey changed the arithmetic. A full channel, running around the clock, meant airtime for languages that had never had any.
Languages You Will Hear
The mix shifts through the day, and it is wider than most viewers from the peninsula expect.
- Iban – Sarawak’s largest indigenous language
- Kadazandusun – the main Sabahan language group
- Bajau – spoken along Sabah’s coasts
- Other Dusunic languages – smaller communities given slots that did not exist before
- Malay – used for news, official content and programmes aimed at both states
- English – appears in youth-oriented and lifestyle content
Nobody is expected to follow all of it. The point is that each community finds something in its own language somewhere in the schedule.
Inside the Schedule
Programming reflects the region rather than importing a peninsular schedule wholesale.
News and current affairs covers Sabah and Sarawak in detail – state politics, rural development, land issues, infrastructure – subjects a national bulletin compresses into a sentence.
Cultural programming records traditional music, dance, crafts and oral storytelling. Some of this material exists nowhere else, which gives the channel an archival value beyond its viewing figures.
Festivals receive full treatment, particularly the harvest celebrations that matter more in Borneo than any other event in the calendar.
Drama and entertainment is produced locally, using Bornean settings, casts and languages.
Documentary covers the region’s rainforest, rivers, longhouse communities and history.
Youth and lifestyle content sits alongside the rest, reflecting the channel’s secondary aim of reaching younger urban viewers.
The Thirty-Three Year Gap
East Malaysia did have its own television once. Then it lost it.
Televisyen Sabah began broadcasting from Kota Kinabalu in the early 1970s, run separately from the Kuala Lumpur network and producing its own programmes. It was later folded into RTM as Rangkaian Ketiga, the Third Network, and extended to Sarawak.
The network was dissolved in the mid-1980s. Its frequencies were absorbed, its output merged into the national channels, and Borneo went back to receiving television made elsewhere.
What followed was a gap of more than three decades. RTM experimented during that time – a digital trial channel promoting East Malaysian culture ran for a period – but nothing permanent emerged until TV Okey launched in 2018, deliberately from Kota Kinabalu rather than the capital.
TV Okey or TVS?
Sarawak launched its own state channel a couple of years after TV Okey arrived, which raises a fair question for viewers there.
| TV Okey | TVS | |
|---|---|---|
| Operator | RTM, federal | Sarawak Media Group, state |
| Coverage | Sabah and Sarawak | Sarawak focused |
| Languages | Bornean languages across both states | Sarawak languages, mainly Iban |
| Funding | Federal government | State government |
| Reach | National terrestrial and satellite | Strongest within Sarawak |
The two overlap without replacing each other. Sarawakians often watch both – TVS for state matters, TV Okey for content spanning both Bornean states.
Who It Reaches
The audience is more layered than the channel’s regional label suggests.
Households in Sabah and Sarawak form the core, particularly outside the main towns where local-language programming has the strongest pull.
Bornean families in the peninsula use it to stay connected, since it is carried nationally rather than regionally.
Younger viewers are a deliberate secondary target, which explains the lifestyle and music content sitting alongside traditional programming.
Researchers and students turn to it for recorded material on languages and cultural practice that is difficult to find documented anywhere else.
Questions Viewers Ask
Who runs TV Okey?
Radio Televisyen Malaysia, a department of the Malaysian government.
What does OKEY stand for?
Opportunity, Knowledge, Exciting Yours.
What channel is TV Okey on myFreeview?
Channel 110. On Astro it is channel 109.
When did TV Okey launch?
In 2018, at a ceremony in Kota Kinabalu.
What languages does it broadcast in?
Iban, Kadazandusun, Bajau and other Bornean languages, along with Malay and some English.
Can I watch it in Peninsular Malaysia?
Yes. Despite its regional focus, TV Okey is carried nationally.
Does it broadcast 24 hours?
Yes.
Is TV Okey the same as TVS?
No. TV Okey is run federally by RTM and covers both Bornean states. TVS is Sarawak’s own state channel.
Did East Malaysia have a channel before this?
Yes. A separate network operated from Kota Kinabalu in the 1970s and early 1980s before being dissolved into RTM’s national channels.
Where can I find programmes on demand?
RTMKlik holds RTM’s catch-up library.