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Delegitimating Authoritarianism 39

these shows by producing competing, ideologically acceptable versions on Indonesian
television—notably the TVRI-produced serial drama, Keluarga Rahmat ( The Rahmat
Family ).
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Another way to compete with foreign television, favored by Suharto’s children
and cronies anxious to expand their business empires, was to launch domestic com-
mercial stations producing their own Indonesian versions of foreign shows. Yielding
to pressure, Suharto began granting commercial television licenses in 1987, first to
his oldest son, who launched RCTI (Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia), and then to his
oldest daughter, his foster brother, and two close business associates. The expecta-
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tion was that the new stations, as loyal members of the national “family,” would pro-
mote Indonesian values and regime interests. Most critically, the government-run
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TVRI would retain its monopoly on news, which would be rebroadcast by the private
stations throughout the day.
In practice, however, the private stations responded to commercial imperatives
and soon became a Trojan horse in the New Order’s control over the public sphere.
Concerned less with state mythologies than with financial profits, they found ways
around regulations barring their own news production. RCTI began airing “soft
news,” or “information” shows that gradually expanded coverage to include segments
on crime, “everyday issues,” and sometimes more controversial matters, such as slum
clearances and the business exploits of Suharto’s youngest son.
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These quasi-news shows, paralleling similar trends in radio, not only pushed the
boundaries of allowable content but also took risks in introducing unscripted inter-
views to commercial television. Then in 1993, with stations seeking ways to increase
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their audiences, Witoelar went further by convincing producers at SCTV to launch a
full-length interview talk show, Perspektif , modeled on CNN’s Larry King Live .
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Witoelar imagined that even though it aired on a regime-connected station, such a
show could be liberating in breaking through the fear and obfuscation he saw paralyz-
ing the public sphere. Of the era’s many possible approaches to the talk show, Larry
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King’s staid, nonconfrontational format of one-on-one conversation may have seemed
the least threatening to Suharto’s New Order. Nonetheless, King’s show possessed
the key elements of the talk show genre that represented, in Indonesia’s authoritarian
context, real change to a television landscape heretofore marked by highly controlled,
predictable, monologic, and often didactic speech.
Despite King’s apparent “ordinariness,” Witoelar later argued, his genius—
being “curious” rather than contentious—lay precisely in delivering the authentic
and unplanned. In contrast to many US talk shows that were staged to frame brief
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moments of unscripted spontaneity, King required his celebrity guests to drop the
safety net of prepared questions and risk a full half hour of genuine conversation.
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Following this model, Witoelar described the unedited spontaneity of his own show
as its greatest strength. “I emphasize to each guest,” he explained, “that Perspektif
discussions do not use lists of questions of any sort. Conversations are allowed to
take their own course.” Guests on Perspektif were generally public figures, and dis-
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cussions tended to hew closely to each person’s particular realm of expertise. Regard-
less of topic, the ultimate goal was to lead guests just outside their comfort zones,
generating unrehearsed “emotions and thought” and thereby producing the dynamic
required to transform talking heads into dialogue.
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In his book on Perspektif , Witoelar expands on the importance of genuine dialogue
in holding audience attention, pointing out that “conversation cannot just be two peo-
ple taking turns.” The latter merely grants guests a platform for holding forth—an
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