One afternoon in mid-2010, my phone rang. It was Taufik Mihardja, senior journalist at Kompas and editor-in-chief of kompas.com. Mas Vik, as we called him, wanted to meet. I assumed it was another interview request, maybe a follow-up to the Panasonic Gobel Award I had just received.
I was wrong.
What he brought to the table was not a question. It was a challenge: build a television network for Kompas Gramedia Group, from scratch.
Kompas Gramedia had previously held shares in Trans7, but the entire operation was managed by Trans TV under Chairul Tanjung. This time, the group wanted something of their own. In our second meeting, Agung Adiprasetyo convinced me that Kompas Gramedia was serious. Then he arranged for me to sit with Jakob Oetama, the man who had built Kompas from a single newspaper in 1965 into one of Southeast Asia's most respected media groups.
Pak Jakob did not talk about ratings. He did not talk about market share. He talked about civilization. He wanted a television, that could his words "enlighten the nation and enrich the people."
How do you say no to that?
But before the inspiration came the anxiety. Hours before our planned launch in September 2011, the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission announced that Kompas TV did not have a proper broadcasting license. We were forced to call ourselves a "content provider" instead of a broadcaster. Two days after going on air, the network had to remove "TV" from its own logo. That small erasure hit the team harder than any rating number ever could.
And the network licensing system in Indonesia ,which required separate licenses for each region, meant we were bleeding money and energy just to exist in multiple cities. These were the realities nobody saw behind the tagline.
I say this not to complain, but because the story of Kompas TV makes no sense without understanding what we were up against from day one.
I started building Kompas TV with three people: Uncu Putra, M. Taufik Hidayat, and Akhmad SEF. Four of us in a room, building a national television network from zero. I remember that feeling, terrifying and beautiful at the same time. Soon, idealists from other stations started joining. Apni Jaya Putra. Wahyu Mul. People who could have stayed comfortable where they were, but chose to bet on something unproven.
We had to decide early on: not what programs to make, but what kind of television we wanted to be. Two dominant players already owned the commercial space. Competing on their terms made no sense. I believed Indonesia deserved a television that gave more value to its audience, not just more noise.
So we chose the tagline "Inspirasi Indonesia." And we meant it.
Kompas TV went on air on September 9, 2011, opening with Simfoni Semesta Raya, a symphonic concert broadcast from Jakarta, after test broadcasts had reached seven cities including Surabaya, Bandung, Medan, and Makassar. The programs that followed were unlike anything else on Indonesian television. Teroka took viewers into uncharted corners of the archipelago. Jejak Nusantara told the stories embedded in Indonesia's cultural roots. Hidden Paradise revealed places and communities that mainstream TV had long ignored.
People started calling Kompas TV "Indonesia's Nat Geo." That made me smile.
Our music program Showcase required every artist to perform live. No lip-syncing. In an era where playback had become the default on Indonesian music shows, we simply refused to do it.
But the program I am most proud of is Stand Up Comedy Indonesia.
In 2011, stand-up comedy barely existed as a television format in this country. Together with Pandji Pragiwaksono, Raditya Dika, and the legendary Indro Warkop, we created the first nationally televised stand-up comedy competition. Pandji later admitted that filling the roster for that first season was a real struggle. The ratings were small.
But something else was growing.
What began as a talent search on a station nobody expected to last became the birthplace of an entire industry. Ryan Adriandhy, Ernest Prakasa, Gilang Bhaskara, Ge Pamungkas, Mo sidik, David Nurbianto, Arie Keriting, almost every name that matters in Indonesian comedy today walked through the SUCI stage first. The show did not just find comedians. It built community open mics in cities from Makassar to Medan. More than a decade and twelve seasons later, SUCI is still running.
Stand-up comedy in Indonesia is no longer a subculture. It is a mirror of our society, a space where people say what newspapers sometimes cannot. That, to me, is resonance. Not ratings. Resonance.
The industry recognized what Kompas TV was doing in those early years. The Asian Television Awards 2012 as Best Entertainment Program One off,Citra Pariwara TV Station of the Year in 2012. The Piala Adinegoro, Indonesian journalism's highest honor in the television category in both 2012 and 2013.
And yet, AC Nielsen's numbers told a different story. The ratings and share did not meet the targets stakeholders expected. I have always questioned the reliability of that measurement system, its methodology feels outdated, often disconnected from what audiences actually watch and love. But the business side of television does not run on conviction. It runs on numbers. And ours were not enough.
The belief that had fueled everything began to waver. Not just mine, the institution's.
In September 2012, I accepted an offer from EMTEK to join Indosiar.
Kompas TV was my baby. Its colors, its voice, its ambition, these came from a vision I had carried and fought for. Walking away felt like leaving part of myself behind. But I did not leave the vision. I left the vessel. Indosiar, as one of Indonesia's established national broadcasters, gave me a larger canvas to continue what I had always believed in: making television that serves people, not just sells to them.
At Indosiar, I would go on to create Dangdut Academy and bring back stand-up comedy in a format that finally reached the ratings the genre deserved, Stand Up Comedy Academy. The seeds planted at Kompas TV did not die. They found new soil.
Jakob Oetama passed away on September 9, 2020, exactly nine years to the day after Kompas TV first went on air. I think about the symmetry of that date often.
He wanted a television that could build civilization. I do not know if we fully achieved that. But I know we tried, with everything we had, with a team of people who believed that television could be more than what it had become.
SUCI is still on the air. The comedians we discovered are filling stadiums. The programs we created opened doors for a kind of storytelling that Indonesian TV had never attempted before.
The tagline has changed. The programs have evolved. But something from those early days is still alive, still breathing, in the DNA of Indonesian television today.
That is enough for me.
