Small questions why

Now I have to say that after wondering why plates are round (answers to question welcome in comments), this very idiosyncratically Singaporean, absolutely true, very funny question put a huge smile to my face.

There is something that’s been bothering me all day. Back in April 1963, Television Singapura launched Channel 5, the channel we have all become so familiar with. My question is, why was it Channel 5 and not, say, Channel 1, 2, 3 or 4? Despite the best of my internet search abilities, I cannot fathom an answer. To make things more perplexing, Television Singapura launched Channel 8 in November the same year. Did channel 6 and 7 pop up in this span of time, or did Television Singapura arbitrarily think those other numbers were just not cool enough?

Initially, I was thinking that the reason behind this might have been our merger with Malaysia back in the day - when Singapore became part of Malaysia, Television Singapura was renamed Television Malaysia (Singapura). As we know, Malaysia had RTM 1 and 2. Perhaps this explained us calling our channel number 5. That being said, RTM 1 was launched in December 963, AFTER channel 5. RTM 2 only began in 1969. Why the hell would we thus give two non-existing television stations precendence? Also, this doesn’t explain why we didn’t pick the numbers 3 or 4. Malaysia’s TV3, I believe, was only launched in 1983. What gives?

I suppose this could be some sort of channel naming convention - 5 could be related to some technical detail, like the frequency it was broadcasting at. That being said, I don’t understand why we couldn’t make like our northern neighbours and go for channel 1 and 2 - wouldn’t that have been much easier? Perhaps someone just liked the number 5, and 8, as well. Does anyone care to enlighten me? I have been wondering about this all bloody day.