About BETV

BETV

BETV, short for Bengkulu Ekspress Televisi, is a local television station serving Bengkulu province on the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Operated by PT Media Sarana Televisi Bengkulu and owned within the Disway National Network, it was launched on 18 December 2013 and broadcasts general programming in Indonesian from the provincial capital, Bengkulu City. Its schedule mixes local news bulletins covering the city and the province's regencies with talk shows, women's programming, health discussion, religious segments, comedy and music, and its signal is carried beyond its terrestrial area by satellite on Telkom-4 and by online live streaming. Together with RBTV, it is one of the two most-watched local television services in Bengkulu province, and its flagship news programme, Kabar Metropolis, is a regular subject of academic study of Indonesian local journalism.

Launch and ownership

BETV began broadcasting on 18 December 2013, entering a Bengkulu market that had, until then, been served locally mainly by the state broadcaster's regional station and by RBTV. The operating company is PT Media Sarana Televisi Bengkulu, and the station belongs to the Disway National Network, the media network built around the Disway name whose local titles across Indonesia pair regional newspapers and broadcast outlets under common ownership. That network membership places BETV alongside sister local media in the province, including RBTV, which is also listed under Disway and B Universe ownership in Bengkulu's television listings, although the two stations remain separate services with separate companies and separate news programmes. The station's own letterhead expands its name as Bengkulu Ekspress Televisi, echoing the Ekspress newspaper naming used within its group, and carries the slogan "Aktual, Santun, Menghibur" — topical, courteous and entertaining — as a statement of its editorial manner. Its offices are on Jalan Jati in the Simpang Skip area of Bengkulu City.

Bengkulu, the province it serves

Bengkulu is one of Sumatra's smaller provinces, a long coastal territory facing the Indian Ocean, with a population concentrated in Bengkulu City and spread through regencies including Rejang Lebong, Lebong, Kepahiang, Seluma, South Bengkulu and Kaur. National television from Jakarta covers the province only in passing, so the task of reporting regency government, local infrastructure, markets, schools and community events falls to local media. BETV was created for exactly that space. Its programme titles map onto the province's geography: alongside the metropolitan news of the capital, it runs bulletins named for the regencies and cultural regions it covers, such as Kabar Rejang for the Rejang Lebong highlands and Kabar Semaku, referring to the southern coastal area of Seluma, Manna and Kaur. A station whose news brands are named after its own districts is declaring that its journalism begins at home, and BETV's schedule has kept that local structure throughout its time on air.

News programming and Kabar Metropolis

News is the station's spine. Kabar Metropolis is its flagship bulletin, covering government and politics in Bengkulu province, development and public affairs, and it is the programme through which most academic commentary on BETV has been written. A study of news accuracy at Bengkulu's local television stations, comparing BETV's Kabar Metropolis with RBTV's Laporan Malam on the same stories, found that the two stations were the province's most popular local television media, and that BETV's reporting gave particular weight to infrastructure problems as its most important information, alongside coverage of the Bengkulu provincial government's programmes. The study was critical as well as descriptive, arguing that local bulletins at both stations leaned heavily toward development news — the building of offices and roads — and were not yet maximally critical or balanced in examining that development. Kabar Daerah, the regional news strand, and the regency bulletins Kabar Rejang and Kabar Semaku extend the same reporting across the province, while Bekasus covers crime and legal affairs and Hot Issue handles the contested topics of the moment.

Talk, community and daytime programmes

Around the bulletins, BETV builds a daytime and evening schedule of talk and community formats that the station itself catalogues in its audience research. Ngopi, short for Ngobrol Pagi, is a morning conversation programme; Bengkulu Talk Show provides a general discussion forum for public figures and local issues; Dari Perempuan is a programme made from and for women's perspectives; and Kang Dul Cari Tahu sends its host out to find out how things work and what is happening in the community. Betandang, a visiting format built around going out to meet people in their own places, and Pos Beken complete a strand of programming whose common feature is participation: the station's own descriptions emphasise programmes that involve the public directly, from music competitions and interactive lectures to community events, so that viewers appear in the schedule as contributors rather than only as an audience. This participatory emphasis is characteristic of Indonesian local television, where a station's standing depends on being visibly present in the life of its city.

Education, health and religious segments

BETV's published self-description presents education and social-cultural development as the station's founding purposes, and its programme list bears that out in specific strands. Obat, short for Obrolan Kesehatan, is a health talk programme in which medical topics are discussed in conversation form for a general audience. Educational programming described by the station ranges from basic learning content for children, including reading, writing and arithmetic, to documentary programmes introducing the natural wealth and culture of Bengkulu to a wider audience. Religious broadcasting has a regular place as well: Dakwah Ruqyah is a religious segment, and during Ramadan in April 2018 the station organised a province-wide selection of young male and female preachers, the Pemilihan Ustadz-Ustadzah Remaja, open to junior and senior high school students across Bengkulu province and university students in the city, run in cooperation with the state Islamic institute in Bengkulu, whose hall and sound system the station formally requested for the auditions. Events of that kind, organised by the station rather than merely reported by it, are part of how BETV maintains its presence in the province's religious and educational calendar.

Entertainment: comedy and music

The entertainment strand is deliberately local in flavour. Komedi Semaku is a comedy programme whose name ties it to the Semaku area of southern Bengkulu, rooting its humour in a recognisable home territory rather than in Jakarta formats. Eksmus, short for Ekspresi Musik, is the station's music expression programme, giving local musicians a television platform of a kind that national channels rarely offer to performers from a small province. Documentary and feature material on Bengkulu's nature and culture fills out the schedule, presenting the province's coastline, highlands and traditions both to its own residents and, through streaming, to Bengkulu people living elsewhere. In the station's own framing, these programmes are a contribution to developing the potential of the region: entertainment is expected to carry local identity with it, so that watching BETV reinforces knowledge of Bengkulu rather than displacing it with imported content.

Distribution: terrestrial, satellite and streaming

From Bengkulu City, BETV's terrestrial signal serves the provincial capital and, through the province's digital multiplex arrangements, the wider Bengkulu service areas; the province's digital television listings place BETV in the Bengkulu-1 area alongside the other local and relayed services. Indonesian satellite channel listings record BETV as a free-to-air satellite channel on Telkom-4, which lifts the station beyond its terrestrial footprint and makes it receivable with a parabolic antenna across the Indonesian archipelago, the standard route by which Indonesian local stations reach viewers outside their home provinces. The station also streams live online, a service it promotes as a way for busy viewers and for the Bengkulu diaspora to follow its programmes anywhere and at any time. In the BTV national network's published relay structure, BETV additionally appears as one of the Disway-network local stations through which network programming is relayed in Bengkulu, listed alongside RBTV on the TVRI Bengkulu multiplex, reflecting the station's double life as both a local originator and a node in its owner's wider network.

BETV and RBTV: two local stations in one province

Bengkulu's local television is defined by a pair. Academic work on the province's media treats RBTV and BETV together as the two local stations with the highest audience interest in the province, and their flagship bulletins are routinely compared because they cover the same government and political agenda from the same city. The comparison is instructive about local television economics: both stations depend heavily on official and development news, and researchers have urged both toward more critical and balanced reporting. At the same time, the stations are distinct companies with distinct identities — RBTV under PT Wahana Semesta Bengkulu Televisi and BETV under PT Media Sarana Televisi Bengkulu — and BETV protects its own brand through its named programmes, its slogan and its community events. For viewers, the practical effect of the pairing is choice within a local frame: two Bengkulu newsrooms, two evening bulletins and two sets of talk and community programmes addressing the same province.

The station today

More than a decade after its December 2013 launch, BETV remains on air as Bengkulu's Disway-network local station, surveying its own audience about its programmes — from Ngopi and Bengkulu Talk Show to Kabar Metropolis and Komedi Semaku — in order to evaluate and improve its schedule. It continues to describe its mission in the terms it started with: to educate and inform, to develop local culture and the social environment through television, and to give the people of Bengkulu programmes that are innovative, informative and educational while still entertaining. In a province where national media attention is scarce, that combination of regency-named news, participatory talk formats, health and religious segments and local comedy and music has made BETV a durable part of Bengkulu's public life.