Opportunity abounds for local mushrooming production houses

Opportunity abounds for local mushrooming production houses

Luas Samudera, Contributor, Jakarta

Television production houses are set to boom with the advent
of several new TV stations running local and national services --
and post-production companies will also cash in.

With an average local programming content of about 65 percent,
a station broadcasting for 21 hours daily needs 13.65 hours of
local programs a day, says Sandra Louise, president and director
of production house Avicom.

"There is no way a TV station can fill their own local
programming slot. Some will surely be commissioned to production
houses and this is the potential we have to exploit," she says.

There are eight stations running an average of 20 hours a day,
namely RCTI, SCTV, TPI, Indosiar, Trans-TV, ANteve, MetroTV and
TVRI. Other stations like Lativi, TV7 and provincial station JTV
screen an average of five hours daily.

Demand on the production houses is so high that local stations
such as Riau TV in Pekanbaru south of Singapore, Amteve in
Kalimantan, Papua Network in West Papua province and the planned
Makassar-TV in South Sulawesi may well be unable to commission
enough programs to fill their schedules.

The production houses presently make at least 134 hours of
programming weekly for the stations.

Their productions include most shows screened in the prime-
time hours of 7 p.m. - 10 p.m.

As the station's locomotive for pulling rating and shares
points, many of the shows are frequently twisted-plot drama
serials designed to win the hearts of female and young viewers.

In the past two years, however, two-hour telemovies and
miniseries have become more popular.

Other genres include infotainment, localized versions of
foreign games and quizzes, and variety shows.

Infotainment, featuring day-to-day gossip about local
celebrities, has proved so popular with viewers and advertisers
that every station screens several programs a day.

SCTV president director Agus Mulyanto says most of the
programs commissioned from production houses are prime-time
drama. A one-hour prime-time drama is now worth up to 300 million
rupiah ($30,000), compared to 100 million rupiah ($10,000) a
couple of years ago. And the prices are still going up.

President and director of production firm Prima Entertainment,
Leo Sutanto, says the growing market poses a greater challenge
for production houses as the price of supporting industries --
equipment rentals and talents -- are soaring.

"The market pressure has crippled the supply and demand
environment, especially in talent," says Sutanto, whose company
produces 13.5 hours of programs weekly.

He says the annual operational costs for production are rising
by 10-20 percent each year. "But for artists, the costs rise from
100 percent to 300 percent," Sutanto says.

"The market is expanding, but we are concerned with the
quality of the programs."

One of the problems is that only a dozen of the hundreds of
companies listed with the Production Houses Association can
deliver programs of a high enough standard to be screened by TV
stations.

"What we can do is explore a possible new way of cooperation
with stations, by revenue-sharing instead of selling programs,
for example. That scheme works with established stations, but we
do not want to do it with new stations," he says.

Fremantle Production Asia (FPA), whose headquarters are here
in Jakarta, has found similar risks.

"There is definitely growth ... but we must be careful that we
don't expand too quickly and that we cannot support the
operations and maintain the quality," Fremantle Asia Director
Indriena Basarah says.

FPA, which is represented by local partner Dunia Visitama
Produksi, produces approximately 10 hours weekly including Family
Feud (Indosiar), Hotstreak (TPI), Price is Right (Trans-TV),
Little Battlers (SCTV) and Small Talk (Indosiar), and a 160-eps
drama Belahan Hati (RCTI).

But, what are the prospects for Indonesian shows on the
international market?

Basarah said ideas, especially for games, are definitely
exportable.

"We have worked with one of our production partners in
Thailand in marketing their format to Asia and maybe worldwide.
If we can do this in Thailand, why not for Indonesia?" Basarah
said.

Others like Sutanto are less optimistic.

"They may be exportable to Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, but
not for other territories because of the language barrier.

"But certain genre like telemovies work better even in the
United States and the Netherlands," Sutanto says.

Sutanto's Prima Entertainment has sold 30 telemovies for the
Dutch station and is still in negotiation with a distributor in
the United States.

"What they can do is to screen these telemovies titles for
Indonesian film week, for example," he says.