Comedy hit gets warning for 'vulgar' content

Erwida Maulia ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Tue, 07/08/2008 10:21 AM  |  National

The Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) has issued a second warning to Trans TV for its "vulgar" comedy hit Extravaganza.

"This is the last warning. If Trans TV fails to make improvements, we will order the station to stop the show," KPI commissioner Yazirwan Uyun said here Monday.

The broadcasting commission also announced it had reprimanded Trans TV for two other comedies, Ngelenong Nyok and Suami-Suami Takut Istri (Husbands afraid of wives), and Global TV for its anime series One Piece.

The warnings come following the KPI's 13-day review of 285 episodes of 92 comedies, variety shows and children's programs aired on nine television stations from May 1 to 13.

KPI member Nina Armando said that besides its "vulgar and sexually suggestive" content, Extravaganza, in a May 10 episode, "featured a scene where a woman is sexually harassed".

The popular comedy show airs every Monday and Saturday evening.

Nina, also a lecturer at the University of Indonesia, said the commission also found "indecent" scenes in Ngelenong Nyok, aired Monday to Friday morning, and Suami-Suami Takut Istri, aired Monday to Friday evening.

Suami-Suami Takut Istri, she said, also featured scenes of domestic violence, with wives abusing their husbands, and involved children in "an improper setting".

Ngelenong Nyok exploited "abnormal physical characteristics of some people", in this case a dwarf and a woman with protruding front teeth, she said.

Nina said anime series One Piece, aired daily in the morning and evening, featured "violence and blood" and "sensual looking women", in addition to close-ups of "women's body parts".

She said none of the programs should be aired when children might reasonably be expected to be watching TV.

Yazirwan said the KPI would intensify its monitoring of the four TV programs and "impose sanctions on the TV stations if they fail to make improvements".

"We will perhaps report the TV stations to the police if they don't follow up on our warning letters," he said.

According to the 2002 law on broadcasting, those responsible for airing TV programs that have "violent or indecent content" or that "mock the dignity of Indonesians" can face five years in prison and/or Rp 10 billion (approximately US$1 million) in fines.

The law also threatens administrative sanctions for TV or radio stations that fail to protect and empower special audiences -- in this case children and teenagers -- by broadcasting programs at "proper times".

Trans TV spokesman A. Hadiansyah Lubis told The Jakarta Post the station had made changes to Extravaganza after receiving the first warning letter from the broadcasting commission in May.

"But it appears that the TV show still has yet to meet the KPI's criteria. We'll evaluate it again," he said.

Hadiansyah said Trans TV would arrange a meeting with the KPI to discuss the violations in detail.

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PengamatKPI (not verified) — Tue, 08/19/2008 - 1:08pm

nahh.....KPI wtf is their work
useless....
the Onepiece Criteria is for teen (it's must be boardcast at 2100 hours up)

Rantarou (not verified) — Thu, 08/07/2008 - 6:30pm

I think KPI and TV broadcast should learn more about Japanese culture and what is anime itself. In Japan itself, the people is already use rating system for all media including anime, there is anime for kids, teenager, and even adult. According to the creator, one piece main audience is restricted to teenagers (13+). As far as I can still remember a long time ago one of TV broadcaster was aired anime for adult audience in the midnight (neon genesis evangelion), in my opinion that's already on the right track.

It's better to put some teenagers oriented anime at 10 pm than those un-educating reality show programes

snydez (not verified) — Thu, 07/17/2008 - 12:55pm

KPI should banned sinetron too.
sinetron teach bad behaviour as yelling, hating friends, lure somebody into dangerous, etc , etc

if justice need to be uphold, i want KPI to do banning on sinetron too.

Adinda (not verified) — Wed, 07/09/2008 - 8:23am

In this material oriented world, it's very clear that money stands out above anything else. The producers of the above shows have no slightest idea on the impact to the audience watching the show.

Combination of valuing money above anything else of the producers and either lack of intelligence or complete ignorant for negative impact to the society keeps this kind of shows still being aired, benefiting from audience's lack of capability to utilize their limited valuable time to do something else more useful.

Working in TV industry is like working in a rat possion factory. They must be having hard times trying not to vommit when they even only smell the product.

Big stick is needed to discpline those people.

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