Newspapers are shrinking and advertisers have gone to Meta and TikTok. Everyone knows that. What the latest accounts add is that being big has stopped paying.
Media Prima is the largest media company in the country. Last year it earned RM857 million. It kept RM20.7 million of that. Out of every RM100, it kept RM2.40.
Star Media Group publishes The Star. It earned RM208.3 million last year. It lost RM4.3 million.
Political podcast Keluar Sekejap earned RM2.8 million and kept RM900,000. Out of every RM100, it kept about RM32.
Who keeps the biggest share
A margin is the share of the money that stays after everything is paid for. Think of two stalls. One takes RM100 and keeps RM2.40 once rent, wages and stock are settled. The other keeps RM32 because it has no rent and no staff.
The smallest operations keep the most. Keluar Sekejap kept 32.1%, which is RM32 of every RM100. Good Foodie Media, which makes food and lifestyle content, kept 24.1%. Free Malaysia Today kept 20.7% and Rev Social, which runs the site SAYS, kept 19.5%.
Every larger company kept under 9%, from BFM Media at 8.4% down to Media Mulia, publisher of Utusan Malaysia, at 1.6%. Nothing at all sits in between. The list sorts almost perfectly by size, and it sorts the wrong way round.
The two established news businesses that do make money sit in the lower group. The Edge kept 5.5% and Malaysiakini 4.3%. Two of the four best margins belong to companies that do not report news at all.
Where the money goes at the big groups
At Media Prima, the money is not in newspapers. Advertising brought in RM673 million last year. Its home shopping channel, which sells goods on television, took RM93.2 million. Newspaper sales, printing and delivery came to RM43.5 million. That is about one ringgit in every twenty the company earned.
Star Media Group looks better at first. In 2024 it kept RM27 out of every RM100. But that money did not come from news. It came from a property project it had just finished. In 2025 there was no project. Less money came in, and the company lost RM4.3 million.
Have the smaller players won
The small players do keep more of their money. That is the only thing they win on. Keluar Sekejap’s RM32 in every RM100 came to RM900,000. Media Prima’s RM2.40 came to RM20.7 million, more than 20 times as much. No podcast in Malaysia runs a newsroom in every state, a printing plant or a television network. A margin shows how cheaply a company runs. It does not show what the company can afford to do.
There is a better number than a margin. It is called retained earnings. It adds up every profit and every loss a company has made since it started. Over its whole life, Media Prima is RM796.4 million behind. At last year’s rate of profit, earning that back would take 38 years. The Star is RM56.4 million behind. Free Malaysia Today has the third best margin in the country and is still RM51.2 million behind. It owes more than it owns.
Keluar Sekejap is RM300,000 ahead.
The case the other way
The comparison is rough. These companies do not all close their books on the same day. Some are branches of bigger companies, the way one shop can be part of a chain. And the profit here is the profit the company itself made. Not all of it reaches the owners above it. None of it means any of them is about to collapse. Media Prima made a profit last year and has been cutting costs since. The Star sits on RM433 million it could turn into cash within a year, and owes almost nothing.
The story Malaysian media tells about itself blames the newspapers. The accounts agree, and then go further. Newspapers and television are falling fastest, but the billboards, the shopping channel and the digital arms have not made up the difference. The smaller players did not win by finding a better product. They won by never building any of it, and by mostly not doing news.
