Aussie TV gaining foothold

JAKARTA (JP): More and more Indonesians are tuning in to the Australia Television channel which is beamed to the country by satellite, the network announced yesterday.

An independent study conducted by Survey Research Indonesia found that in just over 18 months of operation, Australia Television has become the fifth most watched of the 24 foreign satellite services, just behind CNN International which has been on much longer, the announcement said.

Australia Television is a subsidiary of the government-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) which also owns Radio Australia, a popular network among Indonesians.

The study in nine Indonesian urban centers revealed that Australia Television is received by 75 percent of Indonesian homes that own satellite dishes. Eighteen percent of those interviewed had watched Australia Television's prime time "News Updates" in the Indonesian language and five percent had watched Australian Television yesterday.

Estimates of the number of houses with satellite dishes in Indonesia in 1991 range from 600,000 given by industry to 1.3 million by Satlindo, the company that owns the Palapa B2P satellite.

Using the conservative estimate of 600,000, with an average household figure of five people, then Australia Television is available to three million people in Indonesia, it said. (emb)