our underdiscussed television malady

An article I’ve been unconsciously waiting for has finally presented itself in my favorite newspaper. It starts like this:

“Imagine a production-line where the manufacturer knows little of the consumers, but still claims to understand their tastes. Well imagine not, this is real. Welcome to Indonesia’s sinetron (TV soap-opera) industry… a dream-factory that’s way out of touch with its audience…”

For many years I have been troubled by the following thought: if Indonesian TV shows are so overwhelmingly disgustingly bad, what can we say of the taste of its viewers? Because as far as the robust theory of supply and demand goes, if you find producers making abundant supply, you may assume they are doing it because of the heavy demand.

This article somewhat calms me down. We are apparently not so much the nation full of Machiavellian mother-in-laws and over-dramatized bitchy teenagers. On the contrary, research hints the whole nation might be thinking the same thing: TV soaps are stupid. The TV producers are too lazy to crawl out of their nook and explore the higher intellect of their consumers. Apparently it’s the ratings they care about, and apparently ratings are not a benchmark to measure a consumer’s liking for the show. There could be a variety of reasons why ratings are high, one of which could be that the audience has no other choice.

A case in point would be my mother, who spends one and a half hours every single day watching soap whilst chastising its plot, its script, its actors, its producers, but also anyone who dares take away the remote control to change the channel. Even the maid (who is an elementary school drop-out) has declared soaps to be 'beyond common sense" and remains a faithful soap-fan.

I find it utterly intriguing that a huge TV production industry whose very existence depends on the audience’s taste, does not care about the audience’s taste. And still survives!