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Jakarta Post

Soap operas, gossip shows drive RI television industry

A study conducted by the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) has concluded that the quality of local television programming has been held back by the endless supply of cheap sinetron (soap operas) and gossip shows

Hans Nicholas Jong (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Sat, October 10, 2015

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Soap operas, gossip shows  drive RI television industry

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study conducted by the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) has concluded that the quality of local television programming has been held back by the endless supply of cheap sinetron (soap operas) and gossip shows.

The study, conducted between July and August this year, asked 810 respondents from 90 cities to rank programs aired by 15 television stations. When respondents were asked to give television programs a score between 1 and 5, the majority of them put sinetron and gossip shows at the bottom of the list.

'€œ[The findings from the survey] ask the country'€™s broadcasting stations to think about the future of our young generation. The greater public appear to want quality content at the moment,'€ KPI commissioner Bekti Nugroho said during the launch of the survey in Jakarta on Friday.

Gossip shows, locally known as infotainment, ranked lowest out of nine types of shows subjected to the study, scoring 3.0, one full point lower than the minimum threshold of 4.0 set by the KPI for a show to be deemed of a good quality.

Infotainment scored especially low in the aspect of respecting private life, only getting 2.57.

Soap operas did not fare much better, scoring 3.02, with the educational aspect receiving the lowest score of 2.65.

Bekti also said that some of the respondents who have to watch soap operas on a daily basis were aware of its bad quality and the toll that it took on the character of the country'€™s youth.

He claimed that sinetrons were responsible for a decline in youth morality.

'€œI just came back from Aceh, and many cases of sexual violence could be attributed to youth exposure to crummy television,'€ he said. '€œThen in Jakarta, there are elementary school students who got into brawls and got kicked in the head and died. Where did this behavior come from? Most likely it was from imitating others. But from where? Did it come from their surroundings?'€

Sinetron has been considered a cash cow for local television since the early part of the last decade with simple and melodramatic storylines designed for the middle and lower classes.

Rajawali Televisi'€™s program creative development department head Fred Suban said that low-quality content continued to dominate the television industry due to the outsize role played by the ratings system.

'€œ[The TV industry is] still driven by ratings,'€ he said on Friday.

Fred claimed that low-quality content was what people demanded.

'€œTo improve things, the viewers'€™ mindset has to be shaped. In order to do that, we have to design quality programs. But the trend hasn'€™t shifted in that direction because [the content] is programmed to follow what is liked [by audiences],'€ he said.

In order to change the paradigm of the TV industry, the KPI is lobbying the Association of Indonesian Advertising Agencies (P3I) to start putting ads on quality programs.

'€œWe are slowly trying to shift the paradigm so that when advertisers are looking to advertise their products, the paradigm is to look for quality shows,'€ he said on Friday.

Fred said that it would not be easy to break the habit.

'€œThe key [to improving the quality of TV content] is [to persuade advertisers]. But [the lobbying] is still in the early stages and it will be difficult for advertisers to want to change their behavior. But there'€™s no harm in trying,'€ he said.

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