About TDM Ou Mun

TDM Ou Mun

Overview

TDM Ou Mun is the Cantonese flagship free-to-air channel of Teledifusão de Macau (TDM), the public broadcaster of Macau. It broadcasts on digital terrestrial channel 91 in Macau, in 16:9 high definition, principally in Cantonese with some Mandarin, and it carries a general schedule of local news, information, culture, living and entertainment programmes around the clock. Its name reflects its city: "Ou Mun" is the Cantonese name for Macau. The channel was formerly known as TDM Chinese, and its own launch as a standalone Cantonese service dates to 17 September 1990, although the channel itself presents its history as descending from TDM's very first television broadcasts of 1984.

Within Macau, TDM Ou Mun is the main television service for the Cantonese-speaking majority. Since October 2023 it has also been carried on cable systems in the Pearl River Delta region of mainland China, extending its audience far beyond Macau's own population.

The broadcaster: TDM

Teledifusão de Macau, S.A. provides public broadcasting services in Macau. It runs five digital terrestrial television channels, one satellite television channel and two radio channels, providing content in Macau's two official languages, Chinese (Cantonese) and Portuguese, with additional time slots for English, Indonesian and Tagalog — a mix that TDM links to the multicultural nature of the city, whose population is about 95 per cent Chinese and five per cent Portuguese and other ethnic groups. The history of TDM can be traced back to Rádio Macau, which began broadcasting Portuguese news in August 1933 and was acquired by the Portuguese colonial government in 1948; TDM itself was founded in the early 1980s as a public company, took over the existing Rádio Macau stations, and began television broadcasting on 13 May 1984.

Before TDM, Macau had no television station of its own, and viewers depended on Hong Kong broadcasters whose target audience was Hong Kong. TDM has also been described as part of Macau's civil protection structure — the primary vehicle of information in the event of natural disasters, operating non-stop. Its other television services are Canal Macau in Portuguese (channel 92), TDM Sport (channel 93, launched 9 October 2009), TDM Information (channel 94, launched 3 September 2012), TDM Entertainment (channel 95, launched 15 July 2008) and the international satellite channel TDM Ou Mun Macau (channel 96, launched 1 October 2009).

Origins in the single bilingual channel

TDM started broadcasting its television station on 13 May 1984, offering a mix of Portuguese and Cantonese programming between 18:00 and 23:00 each evening. It was the first television company founded in Macau. The first broadcast was presented in both languages: the inaugural programme included an address by the Governor of Macau, Almeida e Costa; the first news bulletin in Portuguese was read by José Alberto de Sousa and the first in Cantonese by Marina Tang. During the single-channel years, programming in Portuguese was subtitled into Chinese, while programming in Cantonese was subtitled into Portuguese, making the one channel a genuinely bilingual service for a bilingual city.

The plan to give Cantonese its own channel came early. TDM planned to create the channel in late 1987, with initial test broadcasts scheduled for January 1988. After TDM's restructuring into a public-private company, the single channel's airtime increased significantly from 1 July 1989 — and, in preparation for the split, TDM's sole channel broadcast its Cantonese output from 07:00 to 21:00 between 1989 and 1990, with Portuguese programming in the late evening.

The standalone Cantonese channel from 1990

On 17 September 1990 the arrangement was formalised. TDM created a second television channel: Portuguese-language programming remained on the original channel, while Cantonese-language programming was spun off to its own channel — the service that became TDM Ou Mun. The channel was formerly known as TDM Chinese before taking its present name, which ties the service directly to Macau in Cantonese. In the digital era it became channel 91, one of TDM's five digital terrestrial channels after Macau's digital broadcasting commenced in 2008, broadcasting free-to-air in Cantonese as what TDM's channel table calls the first broadcasting channel of TDM, in 16:9 high-definition format.

Programming

TDM Ou Mun is mainly focused on local news and informative programmes. Its named staples include the flagship news service "TDM News", the discussion programme "Macau Forum" and "Financial Magazine", alongside local living programmes such as "Our People, Our Life". That programme, which introduces and promotes Macau's customs, culture and people's livelihood, had been running for more than ten years when the University of Macau noted its visit to the university's Currency Museum in 2022 — an example of the channel's steady diet of Macau institutions, neighbourhoods and everyday life. The channel broadcasts 24 hours a day as a Cantonese comprehensive channel.

The channel also carries TDM's own drama and entertainment production. At TDM's 41st anniversary celebrations in May 2025, the broadcaster premiered its television series "Choi Kei Cha Chaan Teng", a new situation drama named for the Macau cha chaan teng café tradition, and recorded a "TDM 41st Anniversary Variety Show" including the singers of "The Voice of Ou-Mun", children's street dance performances and a sports-themed segment. TDM productions made for the Cantonese service, such as the drama "Hometown of the Stars", have also been translated for TDM's Portuguese-language and international output.

Landing in mainland China and the Greater Bay Area

The most significant change in the channel's modern history is its expansion into mainland China. From 15 August 2023, TDM Ou Mun became available to cable systems within the Pearl River Delta region, with a formal launch date of 1 October 2023. TDM's 2023 activity report records that the channel successfully landed in the Pearl River Delta in October 2023, covering a population of more than 100 million people, and that TDM set out to produce news, cultural, tourism and entertainment programmes enabling mainland viewers to see the real Macau, understand Macau and enter Macau. In August 2023 TDM also established a newsroom in Hengqin, to cover the Guangdong-Macau In-Depth Cooperation Zone comprehensively and in a timely manner.

Macau's Chief Executive, Ho Iat Seng, described the launch of the TDM Ou Mun channel on the Pearl River Delta Television Network as a historic moment for Macau, marking a new era in the development of Macau's radio and television activities and cultural industry, and enabling Macau to integrate better into the Greater Bay Area and the Hengqin cooperation zone. On 13 May 2025, at the ceremony marking TDM's 41st anniversary, TDM held a formal landing ceremony for TDM Ou Mun's telecast in mainland China alongside the landing of its satellite channel in Portuguese-speaking countries — underlining that the Cantonese channel's mainland carriage is now a settled part of TDM's strategy rather than an experiment.

Cooperation and exchange programming

TDM Ou Mun's mainland role is matched by exchange projects. The "Audiovisual China – Stories of Macau" project, organised with the National Radio and Television Administration and the Macau government, is co-organised by TDM, seven mainland Chinese provincial television stations and seven Hong Kong television stations, broadcasting audiovisual works across the region. In parallel, a "Portuguese-speaking Countries Exhibition Week" has broadcast Portuguese films dubbed into Chinese on TDM's Portuguese channel and Guangdong Radio and Television, promoting films from the Portuguese-speaking world — the reciprocal side of the bridge between China and the Lusophone countries that TDM's channel family is built to provide. TDM has translated 3,600 minutes of its self-produced Chinese-language programmes into Portuguese for broadcast overseas, including "Cultural Heritage of Famous Cities – Macau" and "Macau's Old Shops – Inheritance".

Distribution and access

In Macau, TDM Ou Mun is received free-to-air on digital channel 91 and through local television distribution, and TDM has extended its services through multimedia platforms including its official website, tdm.com.mo, the TDM App and social and content-sharing platforms, giving local and international audiences access to Macau information. Since August and formally October 2023, the channel is additionally available on cable systems across the Pearl River Delta, and TDM documentation records the subsequent extension of TDM's television distribution across mainland China. The channel's official website is tdm.com.mo.

Place in Macau television

TDM Ou Mun is, in effect, Macau's national channel in Cantonese: the flagship of the territory's only free-to-air broadcaster, the home of its principal Cantonese news service, and the channel through which Macau presents itself to its own citizens. Its significance grew again after 2023, when Pearl River Delta carriage turned a local channel for a city of well under a million people into a service addressing a mainland audience of more than 100 million — the largest distribution expansion in TDM's history, and a central part of Macau's integration into the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area.