'Trans TV' becomes seventh private network on air
Annastashya Emmanuelle, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Another private television station, Trans TV, aired its inaugural broadcast on Friday, becoming the seventh local private television station on-air today.
Seventy percent of its programming schedule will be filled by entertainment shows, mainly imported but with the addition of local talk shows and interactive quizzes, while the remainder of its air time will be devoted to news.
Friday's broadcast was aired in the Greater Jakarta area and Bandung, with plans to cover cities such as Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Surakarta and Medan from December.
For its initial broadcasts, Trans TV will be on air for six hours a day until December, mainly presenting local talk shows, music video clips and quizzes, said a member of the station's marketing staff who refused to be named.
The station is being run by some of the television industry's big names, such as Ishadi SK and Alex Kumara.
Three other private television stations are currently gearing up for their inaugural broadcasts, namely LaTV, TV7, and Global TV.
The government has imposed a deadline of October 2001 for the private stations to begin broadcasting. Failure to meet the deadline will result in the stations having their licenses revoked and their Rp 1 billion guarantees forfeited.
To avoid the government's penalty, TV7 had broadcast a test pattern since Monday while preparing for its experimental broadcast on Nov. 25, said the station's news manager Nugroho F. Yudho.
TV7, owned by the Kompas-Gramedia group, plans to start with a five hour broadcast in November before moving to a 16 hour daily schedule following its grand launch in early April next year.
Similar to Trans TV, TV7's will present mainly entertainment programs with 25 percent of its air time devoted to news broadcasts. The main target of the station were up-market families, with some programs included to accommodate the lower and middle class viewer, Nugroho explained.
LaTV is owned by former manpower minister Abdul Latif, while Bimantara Group owns Global TV.