New TV stations plan to broadcast in December

Luas Samudera, Contributor, Jakarta

Two of the four would-be commercial stations have succeeded in running their color bars trial days before the government deadline of Oct. 25, but their fate remain unclear as most of them cite December as the best time to launch their service.

Surprisingly, Global TV, the station technically lacking in manpower and programs, has delivered a strong signal as a serious competitor to the three other new stations with a successful color bars trial two weeks before the deadline.

Global TV project officer Satya Ganeshwara said the first color bars broadcast had been successfully launched on Monday Oct. 8, 2001. Airing on UHF 51 frequency in Greater Jakarta, the color bars broadcast lasted for about a week.

He said the station, which was taken over by RCTI's parent company Bimantara earlier this year, will meet the deadline and begin its trial broadcast on Oct. 25 with an initial two-hours programing daily before going at full commercial speed in December.

Satya said Global TV, which targets 15 year-old to 29 year-old viewers, shares some technical facilities with RCTI.

Observers, however, doubt that operations will be smooth by December because there are no reports that the station has purchased any programs.

Following Global TV, is LaTV, owned by former minister Abdul Latief who also owns the Pasaraya retail chain.

It has tried a color bars trial, three days ahead of the deadline. Beaming its transmission from its 320-meter tower in West Jakarta, which is boasted as the highest in the country, LaTV will keep broadcasting color bars until Nov. 21. It plans to run a three-hour daily trial program the following day until Dec. 1 when it will launch a seven-hour daily commercial broadcast.

"Full commercial broadcast is anticipated in March next year," said Chrys Kelana, LaTV's managing director and former general manager of RCTI's news department Seputar Indonesia.

Unlike initial predictions, the fate of the third station Trans TV remains unclear.

The third station, Trans TV, had not launched its color bar one day before the deadline.

A late boost of a Rp 300 billion loan from Bank Mandiri is expected to help it meet the deadline. With technical facilities now properly installed, it expects to be on schedule.

There is no question about the caliber of the people on its board of directors, such as former director general of state television Ishadi SK, former vice president of RCTI Alex Kumara and former SCTV news director Riza Primadi.

The station has also trained hundreds of fresh graduates to operate the station both in TVRI's multimedia training ground in Yogyakarta and in a television studio environment owned by a production house in South Jakarta.

Ishadi said a month after the government deadline, it will air a four-hour daily program before going commercial on December 1. However, full broadcast operations of 20 hours daily are expected to commence in April 2002.

"We will do it step by step," Ishadi said. Trans TV is reported to have acquired several blockbuster programs from major U.S. distributors such as 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Columbia Tristar.

The fate of the last station TV7 is still questionable. The station's frequency slot at 49 UHF in Greater Jakarta, which was acquired by arguably Indonesia's largest media group Gramedia, is currently utilized by commercial television station Indosiar.

"We might try our color bars broadcast at night," a source at the station said.

TV7 expects to run a five-hour daily program starting December 1 and launch full operations in March 2002, the source said.

Indosiar's spokesman Gufroni Sakaril said the station would leave the problem of the frequency to the related ministry to decide on.

"We will see whether we can stick to the frequency, or we have to let it go to TV7," Gufroni said.

So, the plan of the four budding commercial stations to join the fast track of advertising competition with existing stations Indosiar, RCTI and SCTV is still far from reality.

An analyst said it would take at least up until the end of the year before the four stations would be able to convince advertising agencies to run commercials, the backbone of the industry, on the four stations.