A BRIGHT SPOT FOR LOCAL TELEVISION STATION ON FACING OF BROADCASTING DIGITIZATION'S SHACKLES

The digitalization of terrestrial broadcasting for Indonesian televisions is in its final stage. According to Law no. 11 of 2020 concerning Job Creation, analog television broadcasts will end in November 2022. The discourse on digitalization or migration of the broadcast system from analog to digital was initiated in 2007 and implemented in 2020. However, the huge gap between initialization and implementation time questions the government's seriousness and makestelevision station owners doubtful and pessimistic. Despite the pessimism regarding the success, Sumedang Televisi (SMTV) was one local television that embraced this change. With its limited resources, SMTV readily adopted the digitalization of broadcasting to create new and better opportunities in the future. The purpose of this study was to explain SMTV's optimism towards the transformation of digital broadcast technology using Vincent Mosco's media political economy approach. This methodology examined external and internal relations affecting production,distribution, and consumption in the mass media, especially television. The results showed that the digitalization of terrestrial televisionis a vital step in developing a country’s mass media. Although it presents certain challenges, digitalization provides new opportunities to television companies. However, there is no difference between before and after digitalization in content production and distribution patterns