ABSTRACT
If broadcast television is the private life of the nation (Ellis, 1992, p. 5), what does a
study of contemporary Indonesian TV tell us about people’s lives? And what do
Indonesians make of television and how it impinges on their lives? However
potentially important, the topic is enormous and inchoate, as we are dealing with
some 250 million people spread across an archipelago and differentiated by language,
religion, class, gender, age and interests. Since the 1970s television has played a key
role in how the political e´lite has imagined and interpellated the population. With the
emergence of commercial channels in the early 1990s, most broadcasting, whether
terrestrial or satellite, has comprised ‘entertainment’ in a broad sense. More
specifically, since 2002, certain surprising kinds of reality TV have become highly
popular and have attracted extensive concern and commentary. So I wish here to
consider how they imagine and address their audiences, why they have generated
such controversy and who is perturbed by such programmes.
