Can NET TV Survive to its 7th Anniversary?

The TV station has been making news itself in recent months with reports of mass layoffs

AC Nielsen’s 2018 report says that Indonesians still watch a lot of television programs. They spent an average of 4 hours 53 minutes each day, more than their consumption of content from the internet which was clocked at an average of 3 hours 14 minutes per day.

Still, what this means is that the internet has made huge inroads in the time allocated to watching TV and this seems to be taking its toll on News & Entertainment Television, known as NET TV, especially because it does not have digital media to back it up.

Founded in May 2013, NET TV was originally fronted by Wishnutama, a veteran in the television industry. It promised a breath of fresh air for television viewers bored with the staple content of other TV stations — soap operas and gossip shows – by replacing them with 100% in-house generated content aimed at the A-B socio-economic scale audience.

Initially, it looked like NET TV would live up to its promise. It offered up current affairs shows like “Indonesia Morning Show” or “NET 12”, that was sophisticated and slick; variety shows like “Ini Talkshow” and “Waktu Indonesia Bercanda” that displayed humor and intelligence, as opposed to the usual slapstick offerings. And it also produced series such as “OK-JEK” and “The East”, which were able to present light stories that make sense, unlike the standard soap operas.

Today, six years on, NET TV is showing signs of weariness as it slowly discovered that while they had quality content to offer, the Indonesian market preferred to slum it instead with mundane soap operas such as “Tukang Ojek Pengkolan” (Motorcycle Taxi Driver) and “Gitar Tua” (Old Guitar). *

To be able to survive the competition, NET TV who starts the business by producing all of their own program, began airing programs bought from third parties by the middle of last year.

They also had an initial public offering (IPO) and issued mandatory convertible bonds (MCB) to raise money to keep them going.

These, however, seem to have failed to stem the financial haemorraghing because NET TV began to take down many of its original programs and instead reassigned producers, editors, and camera crew to managing its social media presence, which is rather too late now.

There is now great doubt whether NET TV would be able to survive until its 7th anniversary, a pity because their demise would also mean a goodbye to quality TV programs for Indonesians.

* Indonesian TV Rating Data from @indotvtrends as of August 8, 2019

Written by Ardhini Hapsari, Maverick Consultant