About Ajwa TV

Ajwa TV

Ajwa TV is an Indonesian Islamic satellite television channel owned by Surya Citra Media, the media company of the Emtek group, and operated through PT Ajwa Berkah Televisi via Emtek's Indonesia Entertainment Group. Based at the SCTV Tower in Senayan City, on Jalan Asia Afrika Lot 19 in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta, it broadcasts religious programming in Indonesian for a national audience. Ajwa TV is a sister channel to SCTV, Indosiar, Moji and Mentari TV, which makes it unusual among Indonesian religious channels: most dakwah stations are run by foundations, mosques or independent preachers, whereas Ajwa TV is the faith channel of one of the country's largest commercial media groups. Its slogan, Cermin Indahnya Islam — Mirror of the Beauty of Islam — summarises its editorial promise: Islamic content presented as cool, peaceful, beautiful and rahmatan lil alamin, a mercy to all creation, rather than as polemic or confrontation.

Launch and the meaning of the name

Ajwa TV was launched on 29 October 2020, a date that coincided with 12 Rabiul Awal 1442 in the Hijri calendar, the day widely observed by Muslims as the Mawlid, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. The choice of launch date was deliberate, and the channel continues to mark its anniversaries by the Hijri calendar rather than the Gregorian one. Its first anniversary, for example, was celebrated on 19 October 2021, corresponding to 12 Rabiul Awal 1443, with a special concert programme, Konser Rindu Rasul, featuring Rhoma Irama and the Soneta Group, Nassar, performers from the group's dangdut talent programmes, Ustaz Subki Al-Bughury and Ustaz Doni Dion. The name Ajwa is taken from the ajwa date, a variety of date fruit associated with Medina and described as the Prophet Muhammad's favourite. The fruit is believed to carry health benefits and protection against illness, and the channel's founders expressed the hope that, like its namesake, Ajwa TV would bring benefit to Indonesian Muslims, counter negative influences and offer guidance for daily life. The Ajwa TV trademark was registered in September 2020, shortly before the launch.

Ownership within the Emtek group

Ajwa TV's owner, Surya Citra Media, is a publicly listed company controlled by Elang Mahkota Teknologi, better known as Emtek. Surya Citra Media operates SCTV and Indosiar, two of Indonesia's major free-to-air networks, together with the Vidio streaming platform, the Nex Parabola satellite pay-television service and the KapanLagi Youniverse digital network. Within that portfolio, Ajwa TV and the children's channel Mentari TV, launched the following year, represent the group's move into specialised channels built for satellite and streaming distribution rather than for the analogue terrestrial system that SCTV and Indosiar grew up in. Operationally, Ajwa TV sits under Indonesia Entertainment Group, Emtek's content and channel-management arm, which is why so much of its schedule is drawn from the programme libraries and production relationships of its sister networks. For viewers, the practical consequence of this ownership is production values and archive depth that few stand-alone religious channels can match; for the group, Ajwa TV provides a dedicated home for the substantial Islamic programming that SCTV and Indosiar had historically aired in seasonal blocks, above all during Ramadan.

Programming: dakwah, teaching and talk

The core of the schedule is dakwah — Islamic preaching and teaching — presented in the accessible, conversational formats Indonesian audiences know from mainstream television. Mamah dan A'a Beraksi, the long-running advice programme fronted by Mamah Dedeh, moved to Ajwa TV from Indosiar and anchors the channel's roster of flagship titles. Mutiara Hati, the reflective talks of the scholar Quraish Shihab, came from SCTV, as did Kata Ustadz Solmed. Prime-time strands include Muslim Update, a news and current-affairs programme presenting the day's developments from an Islamic perspective, broadcast daily including in a 19.30 WIB slot documented by academic researchers; Tafsir Al Quran, devoted to Qur'anic exegesis; Indonesia Mengaji, focused on Qur'an recitation and learning; Syair Syiar and Muslim Masa Kini, which address the lives of contemporary Muslims; and seasonal and devotional titles such as Nawaitu Surga, Mulianya Ramadan and Jumat Berkah, the last of which began on Vidio before joining the channel. Health is treated as part of religious life in Sejadah, short for Sehat Jadi Ibadah — being healthy becomes worship — which transferred from SCTV. The channel's positioning of its teaching content is consistent: scholars and preachers are presented as guides to everyday conduct, family life and personal ethics, in line with the slogan's promise of a beautiful reflection of the faith.

Religious drama and entertainment

Ajwa TV is not solely a lecture channel. A substantial part of its schedule consists of Islamic drama and entertainment inherited from its sister stations. Its best-known drama title is Para Pencari Tuhan, the celebrated Ramadan serial created for SCTV, whose reruns give Ajwa TV a flagship fiction property with a proven audience. Other SCTV religious serials in rotation include 3 Semprul Mengejar Surga, Pesantren and Rock n' Roll and its successors Pesantren Rock n' Dut, the time-travel serial Lorong Waktu, Insya Allah Surga and Trio Gabut Kursus Iman. From Indosiar come the moralistic FTV strands Pintu Berkah and Azab, together with the TV Movie Islami format — self-contained television films built around moral choices and their consequences. Festival Ramadan, Indosiar's seasonal religious festival format, is also part of the shared roster, and the talent format Qari Cilik Indonesia, a recitation competition for children, is produced jointly with Moji and Vidio. This library strategy means Ajwa TV's entertainment hours are largely reruns of programmes that first aired on SCTV or Indosiar, an economical model that also keeps the group's Islamic catalogue in continuous circulation.

Live worship and holy-day coverage

A third pillar of the schedule is live religious observance. Ajwa TV carries live broadcasts of the azan, the call to prayer, and the five daily prayers, Qur'anic recitation (tilawah), and features on notable Indonesian mosques under the strand Masjid Kebanggaan Muslimin Indonesia. Through a relay from Saudi Arabia's Al Qur'an Al Kareem TV, it also carries live pictures from Mecca, including the tarawih prayers during Ramadan and the Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha prayers. For Indonesian viewers — citizens of the world's largest Muslim-majority country, for whom the journey to Mecca is a profound aspiration regulated by a long pilgrimage queue — this live connection to the Haram gives the channel a devotional function beyond entertainment or instruction. Academic writing on the channel has noted how this blend of live worship, teaching and drama is packaged for digital consumption, including a study of the commercialisation of thumbnails on Ajwa TV's YouTube presence, which examined how religious content is presented and marketed in the attention economy of online video.

Distribution: satellite, streaming and digital terrestrial

Ajwa TV was designed as a satellite and streaming channel, and those remain its principal routes to viewers. It broadcasts free-to-air by satellite on Telkom-4 at 3900 V with symbol rate 29800 in MPEG-4 high definition, and on SES-9 at 11861 V 45000, parameters that allow any household with a suitable parabolic dish to receive it without subscription. It is carried on Emtek's Nex Parabola pay platform and streamed live on Vidio, the group's streaming service, where Vidio describes it as a national Islamic channel from Surya Citra Media presenting soothing dakwah, tausiah, Islamic FTV and popular religious serials. Thesis research on its Muslim Update programme documents the same dual route: satellite reception via Telkom-4 or streaming through Vidio, which extended the programme's reach to viewers on digital devices across regions. Terrestrial digital coverage is limited and indirect: the channel is listed with three transmitters, reaching Samarinda through Kaltim TV, Bandung through Rase TV and Purwakarta through Cipta TV, and in Jabodetabek, Bandung and Yogyakarta it is carried through Republika TV's digital capacity. Early performance reported at its launch period indicated very strong results for its live streams on Vidio relative to other religious channels, supporting the group's bet that faith audiences would adopt streaming.

Audience and editorial character

Ajwa TV addresses the Indonesian Muslim family audience in the Indonesian language, and its tone is deliberately gentle. The channel describes its content as carrying Islamic values that are cool, peaceful and beautiful, and its programmes avoid the confrontational style associated with some religious broadcasting. Programmes such as Barakallah, which also came from SCTV, package short motivational messages — on gratitude, patience, sincerity and family relations — for sharing and repeat viewing, and the channel maintains an active presence on Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube to circulate clips beyond the broadcast schedule. The first-anniversary celebration with dangdut stars illustrates another facet of its character: Ajwa TV sits inside a commercial entertainment group and is comfortable mixing devotional observance with popular music and celebrity, provided the framing remains religious. That combination — mainstream production resources, a library of proven religious titles, gentle dakwah and a name drawn from the Prophet's favourite dates — defines Ajwa TV's place in the market.

Position among Indonesian religious channels

Indonesia has many Islamic channels, from Muhammadiyah's tvMu to independent Salafi dakwah stations such as Rodja TV and Surau TV, most of them foundation-funded and doctrinally specific. Ajwa TV differs in being confessionally broad and corporately owned: it does not represent a single organisation or school of thought, but curates scholars, preachers and dramas for a general Muslim audience under a commercial group's umbrella. Its launch in October 2020 also made it one of the first Indonesian channels conceived from the start for the satellite-and-streaming era rather than adapted from analogue terrestrial broadcasting. More than five years after its launch, it remains the Emtek group's dedicated Islamic service, complementing SCTV's general entertainment, Indosiar's dangdut and drama strength, Moji's youth and sports focus and Mentari TV's children's programming. For WorldNM's directory purposes, Ajwa TV is recorded as a Jakarta-based national television network, launched on 29 October 2020, owned by Surya Citra Media within the Emtek group, broadcasting Islamic lectures, education, family programming and religious drama in Indonesian.