Barney and Bob the builder beat the Bombers

By Terry Lacey

(September 08, Jakarta, Sri Lanka Guardian) At the Senayan Indoor Tennis theatre, Jakarta, Indonesia one month after the July 17 bombings of the Jakarta Mega-Kuningan business district JW Marriot and Ritz-Carlton hotels, 75,000 happy children (and their mums, dads and grandparents) jumped and danced to the tunes of Barney the magic dinosaur and Bob the Builder.

All the bombers in the world will never make so many children so happy. These young hearts and minds all knew, as the band beat out their favorite bouncy tunes, that with Bob the Builder, “We can fix it” and that at the end of every Barney show, on TV or live, we sing a song about love...

“I love you, you love me
We´re a happy family.
With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you
Won´t you say you love me too ?”

I asked Tommy Pratama, a self-made entertainment impresario who runs Original Productions, if he was not a little crazy to put on a mass entertainment show for children in Jakarta, based on global Western-inspired children´s ikons like Barney and Bob the Builder, just one month after the Jakarta hotel bombs.

Tommy was firm as a rock and with an eye on the future. “The customers decided what to do” he said, “We were sold out 75 percent overall by the first day on 75,000 seats, and 80 percent sold out on Sunday before we started”.

So he was sure that with eight shows spread over three days (two on Friday, three on Saturday and two on Sunday) then he would be successful as the promoter, who takes more of the risks, and can gain a reward proportionate to success.

In his business model the people who put on the show run their risks on fixed costs and can do well in relation to good performances. But he as the promoter takes on higher variable costs, including higher security costs this time. If he judges his market right then he gains proportionate to his higher risks.

So he gambled that a show involving performers from Australia, Thailand and the Philippines requiring a team of 100 would not be pushed aside as Manchester United had been and that Jakarta consumer confidence remained high.

Tommy Pratama stuck to his guns so that 75,000 happy children, or rather just over half of them happy children, and the rest happy mums, dads and grandparents, could send a message to the bombers that ordinary people want a happy time and not hatred and that they can´t run their lives being terrified of terrorists.

Tommy not only defied the terrorists, he also had an eye on the future of mass entertainment in Indonesia and on the promotion and export of Indonesian shows, including traditional culture.

He says that the new government of incoming President-elect Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) should take the promotion of entertainment seriously as in Singapore and Malaysia and use entertainment and happiness to build Indonesia.

Then SBY will go down in history for the children of Indonesia as the President who brought them noodles and happiness. (SBY´s campaign song was based on the well-known Indomie noodles marketing ditty, and all the children know it).

So Tommy Pratama wants to lobby the President and to suggest a more aggressive policy to strengthen the Indonesian entertainment industry and make better use of it to promote Indonesia and confidence in its future, at home and abroad.

President Yudhoyono should not be diverted by the bombers attempts to scare him and the Indonesian people, seeking to undermine Indonesian success and confidence. He should be like Bob the Builder and tell everyone “We can fix it” and that we should love each other, and not hate anybody, like Barney says.

Children already know these things, but we have to tell all the grown-ups, especially those who help the bad people. And we must not let bad grown-ups teach children bad things, but try to teach all the grown-ups to be good.

In Jakarta this August Barney and Bob the Builder showed everybody that they knew how to beat the bombers. Love and build, instead of hate and bomb.

Terry Lacey is a development economist who writes from Jakarta on modernization in the Muslim world, investment and trade relations with the EU and Islamic banking.
-Sri Lanka Guardian