About The Indonesia Channel

The Indonesia Channel

The Indonesia Channel, often abbreviated to TIC, is an international English-language television channel based in Jakarta, created to present Indonesia to the world in English. It is owned by PT Melia Media International and has been described as Indonesia's first English-language television channel and its first 24-hour all-English channel for global distribution. The channel launched on 2 June 2014 with a programming mix designed to inform and entertain viewers around the world: news, talk, travel, food, lifestyle, sport, drama and film, all about Indonesia and all in English. Its history falls into distinct incarnations. The first ran from June 2014 until it shut down on 29 February 2016; the second was introduced on 2 October 2019 and shut down on 31 March 2023 across Asia and parts of Europe and North America. Through both periods, the channel pursued the same idea: that the world's fourth most populous country needed a television voice of its own in the global language.

Launch in June 2014

The Indonesia Channel launched on 2 June 2014, privately funded and run by an international team of broadcast professionals who acquired and produced content for global distribution. Dalton Tanonaka, a veteran international broadcaster who had anchored for CNN, CNBC and NHK and had worked at Indonesia's Metro TV, became the channel's chief executive officer in January 2014, ahead of the launch. Tanonaka had deep experience of explaining Indonesia in English: at Metro TV he had created Indonesia Now, an international-standard English programme that debuted in September 2006 and was carried by international networks such as Japan's NHK, and he had later created TalkIndonesia and the ASEAN Today programme in partnership with the ASEAN Secretariat. The new channel applied that experience at full scale — not a single English programme inside an Indonesian network, but an entire channel. At launch, Tanonaka framed the mission in terms of both entertainment and education: the channel aimed to entertain viewers with colourful content and to educate them about the growing global role of Indonesia, the world's fourth-biggest country by population.

Ownership and leadership

The channel is owned by PT Melia Media International, based in Jakarta, and from its launch it was privately funded rather than state owned — an important distinction for a channel whose subject was the image of Indonesia itself. Its public face was Dalton Tanonaka as chief executive, whose background in American, Asian and Indonesian broadcasting gave the venture credibility with international distributors. In January 2022, during the channel's second incarnation, PT Musik Hub Indonesia, known as MHI Group, announced that it was acquiring PT Melia Media International, the channel's owner, in a transaction expected to close in the first quarter of that year; the terms were not disclosed. MHI presented the acquisition as part of its plan to build a next-generation Indonesian digital media group, describing The Indonesia Channel as Indonesia's iconic English television channel, with a strong team of presenters and producers, a network reaching multiple continents and, by then, viewing in more than 50 million households on streaming and cable systems around the world. Tanonaka was to remain on board as chief executive, and he welcomed the move as a way to grow the channel as Indonesia's television voice in the digital world, with integrated digital offerings for partners and advertisers.

Programming: news, talk and the Indonesian story

The programming lineup blended entertainment with news and talk, organised around Indonesian subjects for an international audience. Its flagship talk programme was Hot Indonesia, a weekly discussion in which Tanonaka co-hosted alongside Rahayu Saraswati and Yenny Wahid, tackling the country's biggest issues and breaking them down in an informative and lively format, on topics ranging from the serious to the light-hearted. The channel's weekday newscast was Today's Indonesia; its news team was strengthened by figures such as Randy Salim, a former Metro TV anchor who joined from Kuala Lumpur, where he had been based with Bloomberg TV, saying that being part of Indonesia's first global English channel was where he had always wanted to be. Travel and lifestyle programming formed the other pillar: The Best of Bali, hosted by Jamie Aditya, was presented as the ultimate insider's guide to the island, covering everything from local fashion designers to hidden corners of paradise and new green communities. Around these sat lifestyle, food and travel programmes, sports coverage, television drama in a Drama Hour strand, and Indonesian films shown under the Indocinema banner.

Distribution around the world

Distribution was international from the start, matching the channel's purpose. Its broadcast area is recorded as covering Indonesia itself together with Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Singapore and the United States, among the territories reached across Asia, Europe and North America, and it maintained a free international streaming feed through its website. A notable milestone came on 14 March 2015, when two of its programmes, Hot Indonesia and The Best of Bali, joined the national programming line-up of MHz Worldview in the United States, in a Saturday slot reaching more than 44 million American viewers — the national television debut of the channel's content in the United States. In Asia, carriage continued to expand in its second incarnation: MyRepublic, the cable platform within the Sinar Mas Group, added the channel to its television platform, with its chief executive describing it as one of the best international channels to have on the platform. By the time of the MHI acquisition announcement in 2022, the channel stated that it was viewed on streaming and cable systems around the world in more than 50 million households.

Special programming and public moments

The channel used its international position for occasional acts of cultural presentation. In December 2014 it announced that it would allow free airing of a half-hour special on Indonesia's national Christmas celebration from Papua, an event held outside Jakarta for the first time and led by President Joko Widodo. Tanonaka explained that the channel would unscramble its satellite signal for the special, describing it as a fascinating glimpse into a Muslim-majority country's observance of a Christian holiday. The episode illustrates the channel's editorial instinct: to select Indonesian stories that corrected or complicated the simplified picture of the country held abroad, and to make them freely available at moments of national significance. Similar instincts shaped its regular output, from the political argument of Hot Indonesia to travel programming that went beyond resort imagery to designers, communities and environmental projects in Bali and beyond.

First closure in 2016

The first incarnation of The Indonesia Channel ended on 29 February 2016, when the network was shut down in Asia and in parts of Europe and North America, less than two years after its launch. The closure left Indonesia again without an English-language channel of its own, despite the evident international interest the venture had generated, including its breakthrough onto American public-affairs television through MHz Worldview. The channel's first period nevertheless established the brand, the programme formats and the distribution relationships on which a later revival could be built. In the Indonesian media landscape, where international-facing broadcasting had previously consisted of individual English programmes inside Indonesian-language networks, The Indonesia Channel had shown that a standalone channel was possible — and its disappearance showed how exposed such a privately funded venture was to the economics of international distribution.

Relaunch in 2019 and second closure in 2023

The channel returned on 2 October 2019, when its second incarnation was introduced, again under PT Melia Media International and again led by Tanonaka. The relaunch restored an Indonesian English-language voice at a time when streaming was reshaping international television, and the channel leaned into streaming and cable carriage worldwide, rebuilding its audience to the level claimed by 2021 and 2022: a network reaching multiple continents and viewing in tens of millions of households. The MHI Group acquisition announced in January 2022 was intended to carry that growth into a broader digital media group. The second incarnation nevertheless came to an end on 31 March 2023, when the channel was shut down in Asia and in parts of Europe and North America, closing the period covered by this profile. Hot Indonesia and other channel programmes continued to be associated with the brand in online discussion of Indonesian affairs, but as a broadcast network the second incarnation had run for three and a half years — longer than the first, and with a substantially larger claimed distribution footprint.

Place in Indonesian broadcasting

The Indonesia Channel occupies a unique niche in the country's broadcasting history. Indonesian television is overwhelmingly Indonesian-language and domestically focused; this channel reversed both assumptions, broadcasting entirely in English and aiming primarily at audiences outside Indonesia, as well as at expatriates, businesspeople and English-speaking viewers within it. It described itself, with justice, as the country's first English television channel and first 24-hour all-English channel for global distribution. In doing so it performed a function closer to cultural diplomacy than to ordinary commercial television: explaining Indonesian politics through programmes such as Hot Indonesia, presenting Indonesian places through travel and food programming, and carrying Indonesian drama and cinema to viewers who would otherwise never encounter them. Its two incarnations, from 2014 to 2016 and from 2019 to 2023, bookend a decade in which Indonesia's global profile rose sharply, and in which the question of who tells Indonesia's story to the world — foreign networks, or Indonesians in English — became increasingly prominent.

Legacy

The channel's legacy lies in the template it created. It demonstrated that an international team based in Jakarta could produce English-language news and entertainment about Indonesia to a standard that international distributors, including an American national network, would carry. It gave a generation of Indonesian presenters, producers and guests — from its talk-show co-hosts to its news anchors — a platform on which Indonesia discussed itself in English, rather than being discussed by others. Its flagship formats, above all Hot Indonesia, showed that Indonesian political debate could be conducted in English without losing its character. And its history of launch, closure and relaunch reflects the structural difficulty of its mission: a privately funded channel selling an entire country's story to the world is both a media business and a national project, and it has lived, in both its incarnations, in the tension between those two identities.