D

o you miss watching star race car Lightning McQueen and his pal Mater in Cars 2? Or, are you secretly curious about what kind of madness the Kardashians will get in Season 7?

Approaching end of August, Indovision, Indonesia’s leader in pay-TV, will premier several new movies and television series, such as Cars 2 on Aug. 26, Top Chef 2 on Aug. 27 and Keeping Up with the Kardashians Season 7 on Aug. 28.

The satellite TV service from MNC SkyVision will also start to air a new drama series, Suits, on Aug. 28 about a college dropout, played by Patrick J. Adams, whose brilliant mind lands him a job in one of New York’s most high-profile law firms.

Nowadays, Indonesia’s middle class consider pay-TV a regular part of their home entertainment.

Starting at Rp 149,000 (US$15), a house can enjoy a basic subscription to Indovision service with 43 channels, with content ranging from educational programming and family entertainment to sports and news.

Sneaking into Indonesia’s entertainment business, pay-TV is definitely not a match for the gigantic national free-to-air television industry. Therefore, it has grown accustomed to shaping its own market.

Currently, the pay-TV industry’s main target is the 18 million middle-class homes out of the total 54 million homes with television sets.

Kafi Kurnia, a business expert, said that pay-TV was the perfect entertainment and news choice for him because Jakarta demands people to stay longer outside of their homes as an effect of career development pursuits and severe traffic jams.

“I usually get home at 9 p.m., and after a whole day of activities, I just want to sit down and relax at home.

“In fact, most people in big cities like me don’t really like the common contents of our free-to-air national television, hence pay-TV is the best entertainment we have so far,” Kafi said during a talk show in Jakarta recently in accordance with the opening of MNC SkyVision’s 23 new branch offices nationwide.

To date, MNC SkyVision has opened a total 84 branch offices nationwide.

National free-to-air TV service has operated in Indonesia for 27 years, thanks to state-owned channel TVRI. However, pay-TV options are relatively new on the scene. Indovision was established in 1988 and began operations in 1994, leading most people to recognize the brand as a pioneer in the country’s pay-TV industry.

As the first company entering the market, Indovision along with its two sister channels — Top TV and OkeVision — have enjoyed a solid 1.41 million subscribers throughout the nation so far. With such large a subscription base, MNC SkyVision covers 70 percent of the market share.

MNC SkyVision’s closest competitor is TelkomVision, which is owned by state-owned telecommunication company Telekomunikasi Indonesia, with about 1.2 million subscribers.

MNC SkyVision president director Rudy Tanoesoedibjo said he would continue giving subscribers and potential customers the best service his company had in order to maintain its No. 1 position in Indonesia.

“Indovision’s contents are mostly dedicated to women and children because there’s a saying that goes, ‘a happy wife is a happy life’. Nevertheless, we also cater to the largest household spenders, the fathers, with sports contents,” said Rudy, whose younger brother, Hary Tanoesoedibjo, leads media giant MNC Group.

MNC SkyVision is part of MNC Group, which has three national free-to-air television networks — RCTI, MNC TV and Global TV — with a nearly 40 percent audience share according to recent Nielsen research.

Indovision pampers its subscribers with entertainment and lifestyle channels like E! and StarWorld, cooking shows on the Asian Food Channel, forensic drama series like NCIS and CSI on Fox Crime and AXN as well as various children-friendly shows on Disney Junior and the Disney Channel.

“We also develop our own in-house shows on channels like MNC News, MNC Entertainment, MNC Music and the newly launched MNC Shop for home shopping,” said Rudy.

Besides the middle class-dedicated Indovision, MNC SkyVision also extended its influence to all other market segments in Indonesia through Top TV and OkeVision.

“Top TV targets the entertainment segment, while OkeVision is for those who are new to pay-TV.

“I don’t think we need to launch more because we’ve covered it all. We would rather focus on making our services better, including by providing decoders with personalized video recorders [PVRs] as well as video-on-demand services in the near future,” Rudy said.

Looking ahead, MNC SkyVision has targeted to reach 1.7 million subscribers by the end of this year.

SkyVison’s position as the leader in Indonesia is being challenged by TelkomVision, which hopes to reach a total of 2.5 million subscribers by end of this year.

TelkomVision marketing and sales director Gatot B. Haryono said that this year’s target comprised 1.2 millions pay-TV service subscribers, 1 million from voucher-TV (pre-paid) and 300,000 corporate subscriptions.

“With the content that we have now, we are optimistic about reaching that target. Moreover, we now also have local channels like KompasTV, which certainly gives a good education to viewers,” said Gatot as quoted by kontan.co.id.

TelkomVision has branch offices in all 33 provinces and its in-house channels include Arena, Allegro and Ananda.

To reach a broader segment of customers, TelkomVision provides voucher-TV services — ranging in content from education, sports to entertainment — which can be bought at Indomaret retail outlets starting from Rp 55,000.

To remain Indonesia’s top provider, Kafi suggested MNC SkyVision to stay close to its current subscribers and potential customers by hosting more content-related off-air events.

Meanwhile, marketing expert Silih Agung Wasesa suggested the company to increase the quality of its contents in order to earn a good reputation in the industry.

Besides the top two big players, smaller start-up services including Aora TV, Centrin TV, Groovia TV, IM2 Pay TV, Nexmedia, OrangeTV, Skynindo and Yes TV, each with a few hundred subscribers, are attempting to make inroads into the market.

Skynindo offers a low-cost package, starting at Rp 50,000 for 18 channels.