About Republika TV

Republika TV

Republika TV is the television arm of the Republika media group, operated by PT Republika Televisi under MahakaX, the company formerly known as Mahaka Media, and based in Jakarta. It broadcasts news, Islamic religious programming and entertainment in Indonesian, and it is the broadcast extension of Republika, the national newspaper founded in 1993 as a publication for Indonesia's Muslim community. Republika TV began terrestrial digital broadcasts in January 2025 — the national station list records 27 January 2025 — after a long corporate gestation: its operating company was incorporated in 2012, yet remained commercially inactive for years before the channel finally reached viewers. It is a sister station to Jak TV, MahakaX's Jakarta local channel, and it is listed with three transmitters. The date in the national listings carries the marker used for trial broadcasts, and Republika TV's early terrestrial period has accordingly been a trial phase, in which part of the schedule has been filled with entertainment programming supplied through Indonesia Entertainment Group, including programmes previously shown on SCTV in the 2010s, while the channel establishes its own news and religious identity.

The operating company: PT Republika Televisi

The legal foundation of the channel was laid on 8 March 2012, when PT Republika Televisi was established in Jakarta by notarial deed number 09 before notary Zulkifli Harahap. The deed received approval from the Minister of Law and Human Rights on 17 April 2012, and the company's articles defined its business as television broadcasting, film and video recording. Ownership ran through the group's newspaper company: Mahaka Media's consolidated financial statements record PT Republika Televisi as an indirect holding through PT Republika Media Mandiri, with a cost of acquisition of 4.9 billion rupiah. The same financial statements tell a story of patience. As of 31 December 2018, six years after incorporation, the accounts note that PT Republika Televisi had still not operated commercially. The television project existed on paper — incorporated, capitalised and held within the group — long before it existed on air, a pattern common in Indonesian media, where broadcasting ventures wait for licences, multiplex capacity and a workable business model to align.

The Republika brand and newspaper heritage

Republika TV inherits one of the most recognisable names in Indonesian journalism. Republika the newspaper was founded on 4 January 1993 and described itself as a publication for the Muslim community, filling a space that Indonesian national newspapers had not previously addressed directly. It created its own news portal in 1994, one of the first of its kind in Indonesia, and built a digital presence that long predates its television venture. The print newspaper ceased publication on 31 December 2022 and transitioned fully online, so by the time Republika TV reached terrestrial viewers in 2025, the Republika brand was a digital-first news operation centred on republika.co.id and republika.id. The newspaper's headquarters stand on Jalan Warung Buncit Raya 37 in South Jakarta, and its editor-in-chief in recent listings is Irfan Junaidi. Academic research on journalism convergence at Mahaka Media describes how the group trains its journalists for multitasking convergence work and applies its own journalistic code of ethics derived from the Press Council's code — the newsroom culture into which the television service was born. Notably, the same research observed that Mahaka Media had no free-to-air television and only Republika TV in development, underlining how long the group remained a print, radio and digital business before its television ambitions materialised.

MahakaX: the parent company

Republika TV's ultimate parent is PT Mahaka Media Tbk, which rebranded itself as MahakaX on 27 June 2022 in a shift from media convergence toward media technology. The company's roots reach back to 1992, and it became a public company on 3 April 2002 when it registered shares as PT Abdi Bangsa Tbk on the Jakarta Stock Exchange, before adopting the Mahaka Media name in 2010. Its founder, Erick Thohir, stepped down as president commissioner in 2019 to join the government as Minister of State-Owned Enterprises. The group's portfolio explains the resources around Republika TV: the Republika newspaper and Harian Indonesia in publishing, Golf Digest among its magazines, the Mahaka Radio Integra network with stations including Gen FM, Jak FM, Hot FM and Most Radio, the event and agency businesses Alive and Inspire, and Mahaka Square. In television, the group's established asset is Jak TV, the Jakarta local station co-owned with the Artha Graha Network and on air since 2005, which since 2025 lists Republika TV as its sister station. MahakaX presents itself as an integrated media and creative-technology ecosystem, and Republika TV is the piece that gives the Republika brand — for three decades a newspaper and then a website — a moving-image presence.

The long road to air: licensing and the digital transition

Republika TV's name appeared in Indonesia's digital television story a decade before its terrestrial debut. In early 2015, KPID Jakarta announced eighteen digital television stations preparing to operate in the Jabodetabek area, and Republika TV was among them; the commission's leadership said eighteen private broadcasters had received principle permission during the 2014 process. Indonesia's analogue switch-off, however, was repeatedly delayed, and the channel's 2012-incorporated operating company waited. The eventual launch came in the mature phase of digital terrestrial television, when multiplex operators in the major cities were filling their capacity with dozens of channels and niche services could finally reach households with set-top boxes. Republika TV's terrestrial start on 27 January 2025, with three transmitters credited in the national list, is therefore best read not as a new company being born but as a long-held licence and a long-held brand finally meeting a distribution system able to carry them.

Programming: news, Islam and entertainment

The national listings classify Republika TV's format as news, Islamic religion and entertainment, a combination that mirrors the Republika brand itself: a general news organisation rooted in the Muslim community rather than a purely devotional channel. Its news identity derives from the Republika newsroom, whose reporting feeds the group's newspaper site and digital channels, while its religious programming extends the community focus that has defined Republika since 1993 — in the wider group, ventures such as the Ameera network for modern Muslim women show the same audience logic. During its terrestrial trial period, the channel has also carried entertainment programming produced or distributed by Indonesia Entertainment Group, the Emtek content arm, including programmes that previously aired on SCTV in the 2010s — an arrangement visible in the Jakarta multiplex listings, where Republika TV's capacity is associated with Ajwa TV, Emtek's Islamic channel, under the combined listing Republika TV Jakarta and Ajwa TV Jakarta on 24 UHF. The channel is already inside the regulatory system as a working broadcaster: the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission's administrative sanctions list for 2025 records a written warning issued to Republika TV on 24 June 2025 concerning its programme Because Of You, evidence that its entertainment schedule is being monitored like any other licensed station's.

Distribution and availability

Republika TV's distribution is digital terrestrial and deliberately modest in its first phase. The national station list credits it with three transmitters, and its Jakarta presence is on the SCTV multiplex, 24 UHF, where it shares capacity with its Emtek-associated carriage of Ajwa TV. Frequency guides for the Bandung area likewise list Republika TV among the receivable digital channels. This multiplex-based model — in which a channel rents or shares capacity on another operator's multiplex rather than building its own transmitter network — is characteristic of Indonesia's post-switch-off landscape and explains how a group like MahakaX, which is not a multiplex operator, can place a new channel into the country's largest markets quickly. Viewers receive the channel free-to-air with a DVB-T2 set-top box, in Indonesian, alongside the dozens of other services that digital compression has made possible in the capital region.

Position within the group and the market

Within MahakaX, Republika TV completes a convergence arc that researchers were already documenting before it launched: one newsroom culture serving print heritage, digital portals and now television. It gives advertisers and audiences a video expression of a trusted Muslim-community news brand, complements Jak TV's Jakarta-local focus with a national news-and-religion proposition, and provides a broadcast window for the group's events and digital properties. In the wider market, it enters a crowded field — national news channels, dedicated Islamic channels such as Ajwa TV and tvMu, and the digital services of every major newspaper group — but it carries an asset none of them has: a name that Indonesian Muslim readers have associated with daily news since 1993. For directory purposes, Republika TV is recorded as a Jakarta-based television channel of the Republika group under MahakaX, operated by PT Republika Televisi, broadcasting news, Islamic religious and entertainment programming in Indonesian, with terrestrial digital broadcasts beginning on 27 January 2025.

Republika in the group's digital ecosystem

Republika TV does not stand alone within its group; it is the video layer of a Republika ecosystem that Mahaka Media spent the 2010s and early 2020s building out online. The group's published plans for the Republika group included launching a series of digital products in 2021 — among them Retizen.id, Ihram.co.id for Hajj and umrah content, Janna.co.id and UK Mart — aimed at serving the audience's needs for information, lifestyle transactions and small-business empowerment in the religious segment, alongside the already operating Republika.co.id, Republika.id and the regional portals Repjabar.co.id and Repjogja.co.id. MahakaX's more recent corporate communications describe Republika as a pillar national medium presenting objective, quality news, with its Ameera network serving as a platform for modern Muslim women in Indonesia. A television channel carrying the Republika name therefore enters a market in which the brand already speaks daily to its community through the web; the channel's task is to convert that established digital trust into viewing, and to give the group's advertisers a broadcast complement to its portals, radio partnerships and events.