About BTV

BTV

BTV is an Indonesian digital free-to-air television network owned by B Universe, broadcasting nationally in Indonesian with a schedule centred on news, business, sport and entertainment. It took the BTV name on 11 October 2022 as the successor to BeritaSatu TV, but its history is much longer than that date suggests. The channel began in 1998 as Q Channel, became QTV in 2005, and spent more than a decade as BeritaSatu before the B Universe rebrand. It should not be confused with BTV in Bangladesh or with any broadcaster outside Indonesia. Its official website is btv.id, and it remains closely connected to the BeritaSatu news brand, the Investor Daily business title and the Jakarta Globe within the B Universe group.

Beginnings as Q Channel, Indonesia's First Pay Channel

BTV was founded in 1998 under the name Q Channel, short for Quick Channel, by Peter F. Gontha, one of the founders and executives associated with RCTI and SCTV, through PT Jaring Data Interaktif. A trial broadcast began on 1 May 1998 and the official launch followed on 29 May 1998. The channel is described as the first Indonesia-based pay television channel, and its original audience was deliberately narrow and influential. Programming was targeted at Indonesian executives and the upper-income segment of society, at decision-makers rather than the mass audience pursued by the free-to-air networks.

The first programme was Q Inspiration, and the early schedule consisted largely of talk shows and infotainment related to business, the economy, politics, lifestyle and entertainment. In the Indonesia of 1998, emerging from the Asian financial crisis and entering the Reformasi period, a channel addressed to executives and public decision-makers had a clear commercial logic. Its viewers were few compared with free-to-air audiences but valuable to advertisers and sponsors, and its content, focused on information and discussion rather than drama or variety, set it apart from every other Indonesian channel of its time. Those origins still shape BTV today, whose news and Investor Daily business coverage descend directly from the Q Channel proposition.

QTV and the Move Toward a Wider Audience

On 15 September 2005, Q Channel changed its name to QTV. The rebranded channel is described as the first syndicated television station in Indonesia, and its programme range covered business, information, education and entertainment. The QTV period broadened the channel beyond its original subscription executive niche while keeping information at the centre of the schedule. The distinctive Q wordmark, inherited from Q Channel, was retained in the QTV logo, maintaining continuity of identity through the change.

QTV lasted six years. Its significance in BTV's history is transitional but essential, because it carried the channel from a single pay service toward the mass-media ambitions of its next owner. Without the QTV widening, the jump to a 24-hour national news channel would have been far harder. By 2011 the channel had the programme habits, the business and political contacts and the information-led brand that a news conversion could build on, even though a change of ownership was required to finance and execute that conversion.

BeritaSatu TV Under the Lippo Group

On 1 September 2011, QTV was bought by the Lippo Group as it entered the mass-media business, and the channel was reformatted as a 24-hour television news channel under the name BeritaSatu TV, based on the BeritaSatu news website of the same name. BeritaSatu TV officially launched on 3 September 2011, entering direct competition with Indonesia's established news networks, principally Metro TV and tvOne. The BeritaSatu name, which literally means News One, stated the ambition plainly, and the channel's visual identity of the period was noted for resembling the contemporary Sky News style.

As BeritaSatu TV, the channel became the television arm of the BeritaSatu Media Holdings group, alongside the BeritaSatu website, the Investor Daily newspaper, the Jakarta Globe and Suara Pembaruan in the wider Lippo media portfolio of the period. It built the bulletin structure that BTV still uses, with news presented under the BeritaSatu name throughout the day, and it developed the group's signature business events and coverage, above all around Investor Daily. In 2021 the channel was awarded a nationwide terrestrial licence, effective for the following year, a decisive step that prepared its move from a primarily subscription and limited terrestrial presence to full national free-to-air status at exactly the moment Indonesia was completing its analogue switch-off.

The B Universe Rebrand of 2022

On 11 October 2022, during the opening of the Investor Daily Summit 2022, inaugurated by Indonesian President Joko Widodo, BeritaSatu Media Holdings and BeritaSatu TV were renamed B Universe and BTV respectively. The change of name took effect on air at 09.53 Western Indonesian Time that morning. It followed the sale of 80 percent of the group's stake by the Lippo Group to Enggartiasto Lukita, the former Minister of Trade, NasDem Party politician and businessman who became the group's controlling figure and executive chairman. The rebrand also coincided with the final stage of Indonesia's analogue switch-off, positioning BTV as a digital free-to-air national network rather than a pay news channel.

Crucially, the BeritaSatu brand was not discarded. It was retained on the group's news website and, importantly, as the name of BTV's news programmes, so that viewers who had watched BeritaSatu Pagi or BeritaSatu Utama continued to find bulletins under those names on the renamed channel. The BTV identity itself has since been refreshed, with a current logo in use from 2025 described as an iteration of the 2022 design. Group headquarters moved to Tokyo HUB PIK 2 at Pantai Indah Kapuk 2 in Tangerang, Banten, as announced in January 2024, placing B Universe outside central Jakarta while its news operation continues to cover the capital as its primary beat.

News Programming

News remains the spine of BTV. Its flagship bulletin family is BeritaSatu, presented in editions across the day, including BeritaSatu Pagi in the morning, BeritaSatu Siang at midday, BeritaSatu Sore in the afternoon, BeritaSatu Utama as the main evening bulletin, BeritaSatu Malam at night, and BeritaSatu Terkini, BeritaSatu Breaking News and BeritaSatu Spesial for developing and special coverage. Around those bulletins the channel schedules supporting news formats including Berita Merah Putih, Berita Kriminal for crime reporting, Berita Viral, Jendela Dunia for world coverage, Ekspos and Dikit-Dikit Damkar, each produced with the BeritaSatu newsroom.

The shared crediting of so many programmes with BeritaSatu is a structural feature of B Universe rather than a branding accident. Television, the beritasatu.com website and the group's other digital outlets draw on a common news-gathering operation, and the group publicly emphasises a journalism process of clarification, checking, rechecking and cross-testing before publication. BTV's BTV Goes to Campus programme, discussed with universities including UPN Veteran Jakarta in January 2025, extends that news identity into media education, offering students and lecturers exposure to the group's newsrooms and discussion with its journalists.

Business, Sport and Entertainment

Business coverage is BTV's second pillar, inherited from both Q Channel and Investor Daily. Programmes include Investor Market Today, Investor Daily Special, the monthly Investor Daily Round Table, including editions presented with BNI, and the annual BNI Investor Daily Summit, the group's flagship economic forum at whose 2022 edition the BTV name itself was launched. Market opening and closing coverage and corporate discussion formats serve the investor and executive audience the channel has addressed since 1998, now delivered free to air to a much wider public.

Sport and entertainment complete the general schedule. Listed sport coverage has included ONE Championship mixed martial arts, including the ONE Vault strand, the Supercars Championship and Scooter Prix racing. Entertainment, lifestyle and magazine programmes include Dunia Binatang for animal content, Mitos Tengah Malam, Cocokologi, Dunia RANS under licence from RANS Entertainment, Figur Publik and Figur Publik Lebih Dalam for public-figure profiles, cooking programmes including Masak Ala Devina Hermawan, Kuyliner, Endeus and Selera Rasa, Lensa Nusantara, Ototekno for automotive and technology, Ini Indonesia, Jalan Dakwah and other religious programming including GMS Church services, and interview formats such as 30 Minutes with and 60 Minutes with, alongside entertainment magazine Spill the Tea. The mix is deliberately broad, because a national free-to-air licence requires a general service, but news and business remain the programmes by which BTV is identified.

B Universe and Sister Services

BTV's owner, B Universe, was formerly Globe Media Group and then BeritaSatu Media Holdings. The group describes itself as a multi-platform publisher whose outlets include BTV, IDTV, BeritaSatu, Investor.id, JakartaGlobe.id, Investor Daily and Investor Magazine. Within that structure, BTV is the main free-to-air television service, BeritaSatu TV continues as a sister and streaming identity for the news operation, and Jakarta Globe provides the group's English-language news voice. Understanding BTV therefore requires seeing it not as a standalone channel but as the broadcast centre of a news and business publishing group whose print, web and television products share brands, journalists and events.

That group structure also explains BTV's unusual combination of continuity and reinvention. The channel has had four names in just over twenty-five years, yet the same threads run through all of them: information for decision-makers from Q Channel, wider syndicated information from QTV, 24-hour news from BeritaSatu, and a digital free-to-air general service with news at its core from BTV. Each change of name marked a real change of owner, technology or distribution, not merely a new logo, which makes BTV's history a compact record of how Indonesian television itself moved from pay niche services to free national digital networks.

Broadcasting and Availability

BTV broadcasts nationwide in Indonesian in 1080i high definition, downscaled to 16:9 576i for the standard-definition feed. It is available on digital terrestrial television, with local frequencies varying by service area, and by live streaming through IndiHome TV for its customers, Vidio, Vision+ for subscribers in Indonesia, and MIVO. Its official website is btv.id, while group news continues at BeritaSatu's online services and business coverage through Investor Daily's platforms.

From a pay channel launched on 29 May 1998 for executives, through QTV and a decade as BeritaSatu TV, to its renaming as BTV on 11 October 2022, the network has repeatedly adapted to new owners and new distribution systems without abandoning its founding subject matter. For viewers and researchers, BTV is the Indonesian B Universe channel: a national news, business, sport and entertainment network based in the Jakarta metropolitan area, successor to BeritaSatu TV, and one of the longest-lived information channels in Indonesian broadcasting.