Syafni looked amused while watching reality show Rumah Uya (House of Uya) at his home in Palmerah, West Jakarta, on Tuesday afternoon. The 67-year-old man occasionally laughed as he witnessed the private conflicts presented in the program.

"Oftentimes, it exposes people's love affairs. It's kind of funny seeing someone caught lying," he said of the program broadcast by Trans 7 television station.  

Syafni watches the reality show for an hour almost every evening in his wife Zulbaiti's company while their four grandchildren are busy playing with their gadgets.

He and Zulbaiti prefer watching TV for its wider screen and besides, it is hard to learn to use new devices at their age.

For decades, television was the primary medium of information and entertainment across the world. Given its significance, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed Nov. 21 World Television Day.

Conventional television sets can still be found in most houses in the country today. But the younger generation is spending less time watching them and prefers to stream a limitless selection of on-demand content online through their smartphones and tablets.

This reality is clearly reflected in London-based media company We Are Social research, which found that Indonesians spend an average of two hours and 52 minutes a day watching television, and eight hours and 36 minutes surfing the internet to watch videos, stream TV content and play online games, among other things.

Seniors like Syafni and Zulbaiti seem to be among the last remaining hopes for the country's TV industry amid the growing habit of watching on-demand content online.

Media observers believe that certain groups of people in the country remain loyal to conventional TV not because they want to, but because they have no other choice.

"They either have no access to the internet or haven’t the ability to use rather complex innovations like mobile gadgets," said Ignatius Haryanto, a multimedia expert from the Institute for Press and Development Studies.

Among these groups are seniors, low-income families and people in rural areas.

Data from the Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association (APJII) reveal that some 93 million people in the country, around 35 percent of the population, currently have no access to the internet.

Over 60 percent of Indonesian internet users are young people aged under 34 years, according to the APJII's 2017 report. People aged between 35 and 65 represent nearly 30 percent of total internet users, while the remainder are aged 66 and above.

The report says that over 90 percent of Indonesian internet users come from the middle-to-low income segment of society. High-income users account for 1.98 percent, while the poor represent 7.39 percent of total users.

While most people in Sumatra and Java can comfortably stream Netflix and YouTube videos from their smartphones, many in the eastern part of the country struggle to get internet access.

Ambrosius Adir, a 29-year-old resident of remote Lembah Munda village on Flores Island in East Nusa Tenggara, said he should walk for dozens of kilometers to get an internet connection in the nearest city, Borong.

"There's no internet connection in my village, so TV is our sole source of information," he said, adding that he watched TV to keep abreast of various issues around the country and the world.

The APJII report found that the areas with the lowest internet penetration rates are Maluku and Papua, which have experienced sluggish infrastructure development compared with other regions in the country.

The internet penetration rate in Maluku and Papua in 2017 stood at 41 percent, while Sumatra and Java had penetration rates of 47.2 percent and 57.7 percent, respectively.

Wisnu Prasetya Utomo, lecturer at the Communication Science Department at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, believes that television could maintain its dominance in underdeveloped regions simply because of the absence of reliable internet connections.

"For people outside the well-developed island of Java, television is still their main source of information," Wisnu said.

He lamented the fact that many television stations had betrayed their viewers’ trust or dependency by presenting low-quality programs, which "insults people's intelligence".

"The television stations assume that low-income people have low standards as well. Thus they produce low-quality programs," Wisnu said, while urging regulators like the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) and the Communications and Information Ministry to take firm action to address the issue.

Last September, the KPI sent warning letters to a number of TV stations, including Trans 7, GTV, ANTV and Metro TV, for airing inappropriate content like acts of violence, sexual dialogue and gestures, private conflicts and harassment.

The programs deemed inappropriate included reality shows Rumah Uya and Rumpi No Secret (Gossiping with No Secrets), both of which are still broadcast today.

Some of KPI’s decisions, however, have drawn criticism. When the commission reprimanded television station GTV for airing “violent acts” in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, many netizens ridiculed the KPI for its inability to handle slapstick comedy in the cartoon.

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