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.