At 26 'Prambors Rasisonia' is still the hottest in town
By Helly Minarti
JAKARTA (JP): How do Jakarta's teenagers start their day? Many of them might turn on the radio right after they wake, tuning to 102.3 FM and listening to the latest songs and the fresh jokes of popular DJs Becky and Ari.
The radio station, Prambors Rasisonia, threw a party at Fashion Cafe on Sunday for its 26th anniversary. Tickets were sold out two weeks before and about 700 enthusiastic youngsters attended the party.
At 26, Prambors is still the hottest voice among young people in town.
Aired from Jl. Mendut in Menteng area, Central Jakarta, Prambors was set up by teenagers from the prestigious Menteng area in 1967, years before its official founding. Starting from a modest home-based unlicensed personal radio, they could only broadcast one kilometer ahead.
But the once killing-time activity has grown into a high- profit business. It has become not only a high-rating radio station targeting Jakarta's upmarket teenagers, but now owns five other radio stations and related companies.
Malik Sjafei, Prambors director and one of the founders, reveals their formula for success. "We are consistent in serving the target audience. We were teenagers ourselves when we founded it and we'd like to use the radio more as a medium to talk to the group," he said. Their target group is upper middle class youngsters between 15 and 25 years.
One of the listeners, Laras, is 15 years old and never misses Prambors' off-air programs. "I am a fanatic fan of Prambors. I want to be a DJ myself."
The radio station is aware that some of its fans are its future DJs and therefore it organizes off-air programs, like Buleid or Bursa Lempar Ide (Idea Changing Bourse), to communicate with them, according to Dado Parus, Prambors' PR and promotion officer.
Good DJs are just one of the elements that determine a station's success. Programming is another. Designing a program for a target audience requires a lot of wit and lucidity. Prambors has both: good DJs and good programs.
In the 1970s they introduced Warung Kopi Prambors, a popular talk show hosted by young intellectuals, who later called themselves Warkop Prambors, then Warkop DKI. In the 1980s they created a fictitious idol in Boy, the character of Catatan Si Boy (Boy's Diary). This journal-style late-night program was later filmed and became a blockbuster. Prambors has a long list of achievements and has been a trend-setter for upscale Jakarta's teenagers in terms of lifestyle and fads including slang.
They have just launched a live-radio-television show from their high-rating afternoon show, Prambors Mania -- a joint- venture with ANteve. On screen, the program is titled Prambors Wow Mania, hosted by two of its DJs, Irfan and Angga.
"See? We're not afraid of the proliferation of TV channels. They are a more of a threat to print than radio," Malik said. "People listen to the radio as they do other activities, driving, cooking or studying..."
In the city, several other radio stations also target teenagers and youngsters from the upper-middle class, like Mustang, DMC or Hardrock FM. But Malik is not worried. "We have our own fans."
The tendency to set a specific target market is a characteristic of Prambors. It expanded by founding a holding company, Masima Corporation. The company runs five other radio stations in Jakarta. "We started with FeMale Radio in 1992," Malik said. It continued with Delta FM, which plays the oldies, SPFM with dangdut music, Bahana FM, which specializes in Indonesian songs, and M97 FM for nostalgic classic rock fans. In Bandung, they have Rase FM, and in Bali, HOT FM.
"It seems we have expanded so fast in the last five years. But we have mastered the right skills and professionalism during the 30-years of experience. So, we know the formula for every radio station," he said.
But there has also been a flop. Prambors' Cafe opened in Blok M, South Jakarta, but later closed down.
"The cafe business is related to our core business, entertainment. So, we were on the right track. But we have to admit that running a cafe is different from running radio stations," Malik said.
In the cafe business, their customers arrived in person. "We never have that in radio," he explained. In radio, they contact their listeners on the air.
But Prambors' other businesses are not bad. In 1987 Prambors founded Selaras Swara, a production house specializing in recording radio commercials. It is managed by another founder of Prambors, Tono Sebastian, whose baritone voice once dominated commercials in radio and television.
Prambors also has an advertising agency called 1525, Radio Net Cipta karya, a syndication of radio, and Masima Citra Kreasindo, an organizer of events.