Life outside the newsroom: January 2006 Archives

During my first visit to the Lombok TV newsroom they invited me to come back to watch the broadcast of their newscast, so I did. The first try was tharted, however, by a power outage in the area where their studio is located. These outages are reportedly common, because of a shortage of generating capacity in Indonesia, but it was the only one I actually experienced during my four weeks there. The next night we tried again, with more success. We arrived about 15 minutes before the newscast began. The power was on. The newscast production is very simple. They use two cameras, both of which are stationary. There is only one anchor, so the shot choice is limited. They use a standard head-on shot of the anchor, no graphics except for an ID chyron on the "presenter" at the beginning. The second camera gets a wider shot which they use for teases, close, etc. The solo camera operator also runs "prompter," which consists of a piece of paper with the script printed in a large font, held under the camera lens (similar to the KUJH update).

There are two people in the control room, a director and an audio person. The control room equipment is extremely simple. It consists of two Panasonic switchers (identical). One apparently is a source for the other. Some of the standard elements such as the open, commercials, etc. are on computer hard drives. They play these out using Adobe Premier (somewhat similar, it appeared, to KUJH's playout of some elements from Final Cut). All the news stories are on a single VHS tape, in order. The tape decks are located behind the director and he uses a standard remote control to start and stop the tape. After one story finishes, he watches his monitor for the first video of the next story and then pauses the tape; then rolls it again at the appropriate time for the next story. They leave a lot of leading pad on stories, so this cueing method seems to work. As mentioned earlier, all the chyrons within the stories are inserted during editing. So once the tape rolls there's nothing more for the director to do. All video in the newscast is in the form of packages, which also simplified production.

At the end of their packages they follow a practice that seemed common on all Indonesian casts, even those from the national broadcasters. After the reporter's outcue, they let the video and nat sound play for several seconds. They did this consistently, seemingly on every package.

The owner of the station was during this visit, because he was running master control. He is a very hands-on owner. Turns out he is an engineer who has built a lot of the equipment himself. They claimed he built the transmitter, but I don't think so, because it had all the markings – including a model number – of a manufactured unit. A lot of the other equipment did, too. When they say he made it, I suspect they mean he assembled all the components. He teaches at one of the local universities and said that Lombok TV is a "hobby". In any event, he is anything but the stereotypical Indonesian businessman, whose image is one of pretentiousness and arrogance. Most would not be caught dead actually working with the rank and file.

After the newscast, they asked me if they could interview me. Because of camera problems they twice had to send someone over to the newsroom (a short drive) to get another camera. Finally when they found one that worked, they asked me two questions: What I thought of Lombok TV, and what did it need to do to succeed in the future. They also asked me to tape a promo. They asked me to say, "Bersama saya Dick. Tetaplah di stasiun kesayangan anda, di Lombok TV, bersama dalam damai" (I'm Dick. With me, stay tuned to your favorite station, Lombok TV. Together in peace.") Why they would want me to do a promo, I have not figured out.

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.

Security has been tighter than I've seen it anytime before in Indonesia. We had to go through screening twice-once before going to the ticket counter with all our baggage, and again after we had checked our bags, going to the gate. Cars are inspected when entering hotel drives, and we had to pass through a metal detector entering the lobby. However, often these screenings seem pretty perfunctory.

I had an interesting conversation with an acquaintance who's junior officer in the Indonesian Air Force. He began talking about terrorists. He referred to them as "f*)_*^#" terrorists and made the point that they aren't true Muslims and that the Koran specifically prohibits murder. He became visibly angry, which seemed really out of character because he normally appears so mild-mannered.

It keeps striking me as ironic how--in the largest Muslim country--Christmas is so conspicuous. Most stores and malls look pretty much like their American counterparts this time of year. The Millenium Hotel in Jakarta had a 20-foot REAL Christmas tree, which they said they cut somewhere near Bogor (evergreen trees are fairly rare in Indonesia). Almost all the music you hear in the malls, etc., is Christmas music, and there are "Selamat Natal dan Tahun Baru" (Merry Christmas and Happy New Year) signs everywhere. All the TV stations are doing special holiday programming, and promo "greetings." I watched part of a Christmas special on Global TV. Production was extremely elaborate. I thought the dancing angels were a bit over the top, however. The show was all music except for an emotional, tearful remembrance of the tsunami victims. There were vocal soloists, choruses -- including children -- harpist, and orchestra. Some carols were in Indonesian, some in English.

However, almost all of the Christmas decoration, celebration, etc. is very commercial. You don't see homes decorated at all, and only occasionally will you see a tree in a window. These are Christian homes, I assume. There was a picture the other day in Jawa Pos of the security guards at the Hotel Mandarin Oriental in Surabaya, who were all wearing Santa suits. Also saw a picture of a mall in Semarang which has a huge Christmas tree made of doughnuts. But security is very tight. There was also a picture in the paper of security guards at a Catholic church, with a story about the double ring of security established at some churches.

The news on the big national stations (they aren't really networks, because there are no local affiliates) is pretty professional in terms of production. The other day the big story of the day was about a report from the Indonesia intelligence agency that there were threats to Pres. Bambang Susilo Yodoyono and his family. One report indicated that the terrorists (I'm not sure if this means globally or just those in Indonesia—I suspect the latter) are running out of money and have switched tactics to target prominent individuals rather than large-scale targets.

Local TV here in Lombok is really amateur, and seems to be struggling to survive (see separate message). The other night I watched "Nuansa Lombok," the Lombok TV newscast. It is a little "primitive." A single anchor sitting on a very simple and pretty ugly set (blue and pink). The reporting is hard to judge, due to the language problem, but it seems to be pretty shallow. Story structure is very formula, and the videography and editing is bad—poorly framed shots and jump cuts, repeated shots, etc. There is no humanization, lots of official soundbites and BOPSAT video. Every break contained the same three spots, one for a furniture/appliance store, one for a newspaper, and a promo.

The first three stories were about protests in Mataram, one protesting corruption, one some allegedly bogus educational institution, and one I don't remember. Protesting seems to be a popular pastime in Mataram, and there's apparently no suppression of free expression.

There was a story about the bust of a bootleg liquor operation of some kind, one about electrical generating capacity (a big issue, since blackouts are common, I'm told, though there has been none during my visit), and one about a child who died of a mosquito-borne disease (dengue fever, I believe). The story about the dead child contained video of the grieving family with the child's body. Showing dead bodies seems not to be a problem at all here. I've seen several.

(Explanatory note: Lombok is the island just east of Bali, which is just east of Java. Java is one of the larger islands with the largest population, site of Jakarta, the capital. Lombok has a pretty significant tourist industry, a lot of it "spillover" from Bali, I think. These days, tourism on both Bali and Lombok is really hurting due to the terrorist bombings in recent years, none of which has been on Lombok. Lombok has a population of a couple of million, most in the cities of Mataram, Cakranegara and Ampenon, which form a kind of "metroplex." It is not a large island, probably 40 miles in diameter—a little larger than Douglas County. Most notable feature is Mt. Rinjani, an active, but generally well-behaved volcano that is the third highest mountain in Indonesia. )