Captive audience

Captive audience

During this year's school summer vacation, we have friends and
their children staying with us. After dinner on Wednesday, after
the children were given permission to watch a feature film to be
broadcast by Indonesian TV because, after reading the brief
description of the film in The Jakarta Post, the parents agreed
that it was suitable for the children.

Meanwhile, we adults continued to sit on the terrace outside
the house. Suddenly one of the children cautiously approached us
with a look of guilt on his face as if he had done something
wrong. He then told us that the TV remote control seemed to be
out of order. The children claimed they could only receive one
program on all the seven local channels.

We then checked together the remote control and, with some
relief, we found that apparently it was Laporan Khusus time
(special report) again. We discussed the situation and we came to
the same conclusion -- namely why not air the Laporan Khusus on
one channel only and offer viewers a choice to see something else
on the others. One of the children even mentioned this reminded
him of the old days of East Germany, when everybody had to look
at one and the same show all the time.

We believe it is the right moment now for the new government
to also reform the Indonesian TV system.

MANFRED WEBER

Jakarta