About KTV

KTV

KTV is an Indonesian local television station that broadcasts terrestrially from Jakarta to the Jabodetabek metropolitan area. It is owned through the Komando Group by KG Media, the media unit of the Kompas Gramedia group, and its sister channels are Kompas TV and Gramedia TV. KTV began life as a comedy station called KOmedi TV, founded by the comedian and television presenter Eko Hendro Purnomo, better known as Eko Patrio. After a period as one of the first affiliates of Kompas TV, it became an independent local station on 28 June 2015. Today it focuses on lifestyle programmes, entertainment and reference programming in the form of recommendations for popular places, under the slogan Televisi Kota Kita, Our City's Television. It is not connected with any television service of the same initials outside Indonesia.

Beginnings as KOmedi TV

KTV was launched on 1 September 2008 under its original name, KOmedi TV. Its founder, Eko Hendro Purnomo, was one of Indonesia's best-known comedians, a member of the Patrio comedy group with Parto and Akri, whose programme Ngelaba had run on national television for more than a decade. The station he created through PT Komando Media Televisi was, true to his background, a comedy station: its slogan as KOmedi TV, used from 1 September 2008 to 31 August 2011, was TV Humor Satu-Satunya Di Dunia, presented in Indonesian sources as the only humour television in the world. A dedicated comedy channel was a genuinely unusual proposition in Indonesian broadcasting, where comedy normally appears as programmes inside general entertainment schedules rather than as a station's entire identity.

That founding identity still explains the station's later character. Even after comedy ceased to be its whole schedule, humour, stand-up and light entertainment remained in its programme lists, and its eventual reinvention was toward lifestyle and city life rather than toward news or drama. KTV's history is therefore a story of a specialist station broadening step by step into a general local station, while keeping the personality of its founding format.

Joining Kompas TV and becoming KTV

The decisive change came in 2011. Kompas Gramedia, one of Indonesia's largest media groups and publisher of the Kompas daily newspaper, launched its national television network Kompas TV on 9 September 2011. The group bought the Jakarta local station in that year, and on 1 September 2011 KTV officially networked with Kompas TV as its parent station, beginning a trial broadcast period alongside the new network. It was one of Kompas TV's initial affiliates, providing the network with a Jakarta terrestrial presence. As KTV, its slogan from 9 September 2011 to 28 June 2015 was Inspirasi Indonesia, Inspiration of Indonesia, the slogan family associated with Kompas TV in that period.

During the network years, KTV's schedule mixed its own local programmes with Kompas TV material, including relays of Kompas TV news programmes. Its local news strand for the capital was called Megapolitan, later Jakarta Hari Ini. Programme lists from the period show a schedule in transition: comedy and entertainment alongside Kompas journalism, city features, lifestyle magazines and home shopping. The station was simultaneously a Jakarta local service and a shop window for a new national network, a dual role common in Indonesian broadcasting after the 2002 Broadcasting Act required national networks to build their coverage through local stations.

Independence in 2015

On 28 June 2015 KTV officially separated from the Kompas TV network and became an independent local television station, following the transfer of Kompas TV frequencies in the region, as KG Media's own account summarises the change. English-language reference sources give the same date for the station's official broadcast in its independent form. Its slogans mark the transition in miniature: briefly Televisi Referensi, Reference Television, from 28 June to 2 August 2015, and then, from 3 August 2015 to the present, Televisi Kota Kita, Our City's Television.

That final slogan states the station's settled identity. KTV is a city station for Jabodetabek: Jakarta and the surrounding cities of Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi in West Java and Banten. KG Media describes its focus precisely: lifestyle programmes, entertainment, and references in the form of recommendations for popular places. In other words, KTV tells metropolitan viewers where to go, what to eat, what to visit and how to enjoy their city, with entertainment wrapped around that useful core. Its headquarters are in West Jakarta, and its picture format is recorded as 1080i high definition, downscaled to 576i standard definition.

Broadcasting and carriage

KTV is received terrestrially in Greater Jakarta on digital 26 UHF, in the multiplex grouping that also carries other Jakarta services. Its broadcast hours are recorded as twenty hours a day, from 04.00 to 00.00 Western Indonesian Time. It was also available on the K-Vision subscription satellite platform until early 2020, a connection that reflected its Kompas Gramedia heritage, since K-Vision was founded by Kompas Gramedia before a majority stake was acquired by MNC Media in 2019. Like all Jakarta terrestrial stations, KTV passed through Indonesia's analogue switch-off in the capital on 2 and 3 November 2022 and is now a digital-only service.

Programming

KTV's current programme list shows the breadth of its lifestyle and entertainment mix. Recorded titles include Jalan-Jalan for travel, Ayo Sehat for health, Kalam Hati, SUPER, expanded as Stand Up Seru, and Comedy Lab for comedy, Pop News, Bona and Friends and Cerita Anak Indonesia for younger and family viewers, Berkas Kompas, Singkap and Bedah Peristiwa from its current affairs tradition, Stylo, Cemal Cemil for food, Urban, Etalase, Perempuan, Pelangi Indonesia, Suka-Suka, Adventura, Karena Wanita and Bikin Merinding among its magazine and feature strands, together with the animation block inherited from its Kompas-era schedule, which has included titles such as Robin Hood and Daigunder.

Earlier programmes

Its list of previously broadcast programmes is even more revealing of the station's evolution. Former titles include its news programmes Megapolitan and Jakarta Hari Ini, the city features Penjuru Kota and Bingkai Kota, lifestyle series such as Shopaholic, Travelpedia, Smart Cooking, Celeb in Action and The Life We Lead, gaming programme Go Gamers, health programme Referensi Hidup Sehat, children's and family titles, Korean drama series including It's Alright This is Love and Secret Affair, and the 2015 Copa America football tournament. A schedule that has contained stand-up comedy, a South American football championship, city news, cooking, health advice and Korean drama at different points in its life is the schedule of a small general station experimenting to find its audience, and the direction of travel is consistent: away from the pure comedy of 2008, through the news-network years, toward the lifestyle and city-reference mix it carries today.

Ownership within Kompas Gramedia

KTV's ownership is listed as Komando Group and KG Media, with Kompas Gramedia as parent. The Komando name preserves the station's founding company, while KG Media is the Kompas Gramedia unit that also operates Kompas TV, the Kompas newspaper and digital properties, the Sonora, Motion and Smart FM radio operations and other media businesses. Kompas Gramedia's own television history began earlier, with TV7 in 2001, a majority stake in which was sold to Trans Corp in 2006 and which became Trans7. When the group returned to television with Kompas TV in 2011, KTV became part of that second television venture, first as an affiliate and then, after 2015, as the group's independent Jakarta local station alongside the national Kompas TV network and Gramedia TV.

That structure gives KTV an unusual security for a local station. Many Indonesian local stations are owned by small local companies exposed to a single city's advertising market. KTV belongs to one of the country's oldest and largest media groups, founded around the Kompas newspaper, with bookshops, publishing, radio, hospitality and education businesses across Indonesia. Its independence since 2015 is editorial and scheduling independence as Jakarta's local lifestyle station, exercised from inside a large group rather than in isolation.

Place in Jakarta television

Jakarta's viewers can choose among the capital services of every national network, the public broadcaster, and a set of genuinely local stations including JakTV, DAAI TV, Elshinta TV and KTV. Of those, KTV has travelled furthest from its launch idea: it began as what it claimed was the world's only humour station, built by a famous comedian, and it has become Our City's Television, a KG Media lifestyle and reference station for the Jabodetabek public. Its twenty-hour broadcast day on digital 26 UHF carries comedy, travel, food, health, city features and entertainment for the same metropolitan audience that Kompas Gramedia reaches through its newspapers, radio stations and national television network, completing the group's offer to the capital with a deliberately local, deliberately light service.