New educational TV channel planned

JAKARTA (JP): The government will launch a new television channel dedicated solely for education in November, Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro announced yesterday.

Wardiman has secured a channel from PT Mediacitra Indostar, a private company which plans to launch a broadcasting satellite that will have a capacity of up to 40 TV channels.

"We are giving away the channel as our contribution to the development of the education sector," Indostar President Peter Gontha said after signing a memorandum of understanding with Wardiman at the latter's office.

Peter, regarded as Indonesia's media baron, controls the leading commercial TV station RCTI and Matahari Lintas Cakrawala -- operator of Indovision which brings a wide range of foreign TV programs such as CNN International and HBO to subscribers with dish antenna and decoders.

The new education channel will bring programs for students from primary schools up to higher learning institutes, Wardiman said. There will be no commercial and the operation will be funded entirely by the government, he said.

The program could only be accessed with the help of a dish antenna and a special decoder that could only tune to the channel.

The channel will expand people's access to education and will enhance the government's nine-year compulsory education program that was introduced in 1994, he said.

For higher learning education, the program will put emphasis on management studies and technology sciences, he said.

Peter said the channel could also be used political education of the masses, citing as example the broadcasting of parliamentary debates in some developed countries.

"But that is up to the authorities if they wan to use the channel for that purpose," he said.

Wardiman said the new channel would complement the mission of the private-run television TPI, launched in 1991 as an education channel but has since shifted to call itself "the family channel".

The minister assured reporters however that his new television channel would not change its mission.

"In short, you won't see any Indian movies," he said. (11)