Aussie TV gaining foothold

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)