It's because of all those cantonese tv shows in the past. but these past few years, there's suddenly a lot of shows from taiwan.

There's even FTA satellite tv that can be received in Malaysia. My friend has one. Uses the Astro dish, but pointed at a different bird. Only 6 channels, but no monthly fee.

It's a fate suffered by all Chinese dialects. Lookup diglossia on wikipedia. Standard Mandarin is the official / literary / "high" language.

That's what I said.

Poor mom and pop speaks only the vernacular, works hard, send the kids to school. They come home showing the new language they learn and the parents praise them saying they're so smart.

You learn Mandarin in school. Using it shows that you're educated. I cannot read and write, and don't speak Mandarin. When people speak to me in Mandarin and I reply in Hokkien, they know I'm illiterate. If I reply in English instead. They think, "he knows English. Maybe he's not so dumb and uneducated."

It is happening with Malay as well. No matter where you come from, on important occasions like speeches, interviews on TV, etc, you try to use the standard BM we hear on TV. There's a guy on a talk show (TV9 IINM) that speaks with a very pronounced accent (Kedah/Penang I think). One day, my sister was at my home, we had the TV on, and when she saw that, she immediately say "so low class". This was just first impression. But it is what matters.