Local TV in Indonesia

The other day I paid a visit to Lombok TV, the one and only local station here in Mataram.

Lombok TV is in a mostly residential area, and appears to be in what had originally been a house. The newsroom is on the second floor, in a room about 15 by 20 feet. It was very hot. There were airconditioners, but they didn't seem to be turned on. The newsroom is equipped with about six PCs, three dedicated to script-writing and three to video editing. The video editing is done on Adobe Premier; script-writing is done in Word, using a custom-created template. Apparently there's no rundown function.

The station staff totals about 30 people, according to Samsul Rizal, a reporter. There are 18 people on the news staff, three in marketing, three office staff and six in production and engineering.

The station's has been on the air four years—since 2002--and claims to be the first local station in Indonesia. Originally the station served mosly west Lombok and only a small part of east Lombok. Now it covers most of Lombok, some of east Bali, and a bit of western Sumbawa.

Local programs include shows about schools, tourism and interesting things in Lombok. Rizal said there is no emphasis on crime, in order not to make people feel unsafe. I wasn't entirely clear what he meant by this. I inferred that the station tends to be something of a promotional channel for both government and business, even though it is privately owned.

News coverage

There are no journalists on the news staff—that is, nobody trained as such. Apparently the people on the news staff were originally hired to do other things, before there was news programming, then given news jobs when news programming started. Most of the news staff personnel have more than high school educations, but only about 50 percent have college degrees. They've received training in news from consultants from national stations.

Most news staff members perform multiple duties. Reporters also shoot, sometimes as one-man-bands, sometimes in teams with another reporter. The system sounded a great deal like KUJH.

There are three anchors, one female, one male. But the newscasts feature only a single anchor per show. One anchor also reports, but the other two do not. Newscasts are 30 minutes long. There's no source of national news video, except some from events covered by TVRI. Sometimes the station will send its own crew to cover a story if it has local impact.

Rizal said advertising is difficult to sell. The government buys time for programs it wants to air. But although Lombok TV's viewing area contains at least two million people, the economy is about the size of Topeka. There's very little industry, so the economy is based on agriculture and tourism. Relatively few people have incomes high enough to permit much discretionary spending.