Conventional Media, Between Alive or Death is Still a Big Question
By: Gelar Aldi S
Tags: Opinion, Articles, Conventional Media, Online Media, Journalism

The development of information technology makes it easy for people to fulfill information needs. And now, this information is in digital form, which is people need an internet network to access them in online media. And now online-based media are starting to flourish like harvests in all seasons.

Falling Down Slowly

The emergence of online-based media has put conventional media such as newspapers, magazines, tabloids, and others are on edge. Never before, the spread of social media as a means for the birth of new information. There is also clear evidence that conventional media has gone out of business and has begun to focus on developing its media in the digital realm.

For an example, Cek & Ricek tabloid from Indonesia. This tabloid is known by its entertain information, about lifestyle from Indonesian artist and actor also gossips in celebrities zona.

In 1997, RCTI (Indonesia private television) made a program with same title with the tabloid, ya Cek & Ricek. The program had amused their viewers about than ten years before Cek & Ricek stopped production in TV, 2018 ago.

Ilham Bintang, as the founder and owner of Cek & Ricek tabloid confirmed about the imigration of Cek & Ricek from conventional media to digital platform.

“The distribution network is damaged and the culture of readers who have moved to digital reading habitats,” he explained.

Cek & Ricek published the last edition of the tabloid version on Tuesday, April 23, 2019. On the cover, Cek & Ricek informed that readers could still see the infotainment offerings from Cek & Ricek at Ceknricek.com.

There was also BOLA tabloid which had to say goodbye on Friday, October 26, 2018, marked by the BOLA edition of the farewell. This farewell edition is the 2915th issue since BOLA was born. In it there is also a story about the journey of the BOLA tabloid, and testimonials from Indonesian sports players.

Not without reason BOLA “retired” on that date. The first edition of BOLA itself was published on Friday 1984.

“According to history, the first edition of BOLA in 1984 was published on Friday, and will end on Friday as well,” tweeted BOLA tabloid on his Twitter account on Wednesday (17/10/2018).

This tabloid, which concentrates on sports, especially football, was originally an insert in the Kompas daily, and was first published on March 3, 1984 or 36 years ago. Although starting from the insertion, BOLA is the column that the public is waiting for after political news on the front page of the newspaper.

In Celebrating Football: Fans, Identity and Media Issue 2, Fajar Junaedi via tirto.id, “Readers generally read the front page and then turn to the sports page”.

Realizing that BOLA’s presence was always awaited, Kompas Daily also made BOLA in the form of a tabloid — a newspaper format that is smaller than a newspaper — containing 16 pages starting March 9, 1984. That date coincides with Friday, which is considered a sacred day for BOLA. Since then, Tabloid BOLA has been present every Friday.

And finally, BOLA was officially independent — no longer a part of Kompas Daily — since April 2, 1988. The number of pages has also increased to 24 pages. The success of BOLA as a football tabloid has sparked the emergence of competitors such as Hai Soccer (later SOCCER), GO (Sports Echo), Total Sport, TopSScore, Score, TopSoccer, Libero, etc., quoted from sport.detik.com.

Apart from the in-depth discussion, another uniqueness of BOLA that readers are also looking forward to is, a beautiful poster containing the appearance of star players from football clubs. It was this BOLA poster that eventually made BOLA expand to publish the BOLA poster, which was published in 1999.

@TabloidBOLA, Twitter

In the end, this BOLA poster will also be a timeline for BOLA’s unforgettable twists and turns and will become a history in itself for BOLA’s loyal customers.

BOLA’s decision to say goodbye doesn’t mean it will permanently disappear from the community. Just like tabloids or other conventional media that had already “dropped”, BOLA is present through online media or digital platforms.

As a final offering, the farewell edition of BOLA tabloid put up 60 colorful pages for its loyal readers.

Apart from Cek & Ricek, BOLA, several other names that dropped out earlier such as Girls (stopped January 2016), Signal (December 2016), My Friend, CHIP, What Hifi, Auto Expert, Motor (all December 2016), and Hai (June 2017) ) is also no longer published. Most of them switch to digital.

Internet Penetration Growing Rapidly

In the Digital 2020 report by Management Service Social Media from Canada, HootSuite, and Social Media Agency, We Are Social, internet users in Indonesia reaches 175,4 million users in January 2020. That number increased by 25 million or 17% from the data last year (2019).

This penetration is also signed by increasing in internet-connected cellular. There were 338.2 million cellular connections in Indonesia in January 2020. That number has increased by around 15 million or equivalent to 4.6% from January 2019 data. The number of cellular connections in Indonesia in January 2020 is equivalent to 124% of the total population.

The transition of conventional media to the digital platform is to reach readers and add new readers, also as a challenge for press people to continue to exist in the midst of a flood of information both from online media and from social media.

Digital 2020 report shows, 160 million are users of social media in Indonesia in January 2020. That number has increased to about 12 million or equivalent to 8.1% from the data in April 2019.

Especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. A total of 44 press companies that were members of the Press Company Union (SPS), which were surveyed at random, both in the regions and DKI Jakarta, admitted that Covid-19 had put business pressure on them.

“For friends in daily newspapers, especially yes, it has indeed experienced a very significant decrease in circulation,” said Secretary General of the Central SPS, Asmono Wikan, adapted from republika.co.id.

As much as 80 percent of respondents said the pressure varied. Starting from decreased advertising, circulation, to reduced offprint activities from programs with clients such as seminars, training, company birthdays, and etc.

According to Asmono, business pressure is not only influenced by market factors, but government policies such as Large-Scale Social Restrictions (PSBB) which also have an impact on the circulation of newspapers.

So, it’s not surprising the life of conventional media is now really on the edge. Some still exist, but they have to reduce the number of pages and the number of circulation to save production costs while still being affordable to readers.

In fact, it’s not impossible, gradually conventional media will completely close down from the production process, disappear from society, and focus on the digital platform.