'Antara' embarks on aggressive expansion
Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
At the age of 68, state news agency Antara is expanding from its core business of real-time news to television and radio news in a bid to cope with tougher media competition in the country.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla on Wednesday inaugurated the Antara TV content provider during the news agency's anniversary celebration here.
Antara also launched other new services such as an online legislation database called WPU, an improved-version of the Antara website, and a radio content provider.
Antara chief editor, Asro Kamal Rokan, said that the new services were expected to expand the agency's sources of revenue and improve future earnings.
"We are doing our best to innovate to get new cash flow sources," he said.
Currently, Antara obtains around 70 percent of its revenue from selling its newswire service to foreign news wires such as Reuters, Bloomberg, Agence France-Presse (AFP), China's Xinhua, Malaysia's Bernama, Japan's Kyodo and Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA).
It also provides news products to 250 newspapers, hundreds of radio stations and dozens of television stations across the country.
Antara's other businesses include a publishing company, the Journalism Photo Gallery database, a journalism training institute and the Indonesia Market Quotes (IMQ) service, which provides real-time stock market transaction information.
Asro commented that heavy reliance on a single service was not healthy for Antara.
Therefore, Antara is eying some 60 network and local television stations here as a market for its new TV content provider service. It would also distribute TV news and footage to foreign news agencies and international television networks.
Starting next year, Antara would station television reporters at the Presidential Palace and the Vice Presidential Palace. Both places are seen as important sources of news.
Apart from expanding its local news services, Antara also plans to get more foreign clients by re-establishing its foreign bureaus next year. Antara closed all but one of its foreign bureaus following the Asian financial crisis of 1997. It now only has a single bureau at United Nations headquarters in New York, United States.
"We also plan to expand our direct network to media in China, the Middle East, Australia and Europe," he said, adding that Antara would also provide news in French, Arabic and Chinese, in addition to Indonesian and English.
The moves were being taken to realize Antara's ambition to become a leading news provider in Asia through multimedia distribution by 2008.
Antara was actually a private company when it was first established in 1937. President Sukarno's government took it over in 1962 and turned it into a state institution. The legal status of Antara remains unclear to this day, despite the fact that the government has promised to cover 60 percent their expenses.
Although the government has not fully fulfilled its promise in relation to funding, Antara has been able to survive due to its position as the country's sole news agency.