Indonesia to miss Olympics on TV

With 10 days to go before the Olympic Games begin in Athens, TV viewers around the world are getting ready for blanket coverage.

But not in Indonesia, where the games will not be shown live on TV because there were not enough advertisers to make it commercially viable, according to local media reports.

Indonesia will be the only nation competing in Athens not to telecast the games, according to John Barton, from the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union.

"It is a sad day for international sports, and for the many people in Indonesia who would be keen to support their athletes and teams in Athens," he told the Jakarta Post.

"We wanted to air the games but we couldn't get enough interest from advertisers," Teguh Juwarno, a spokesman for the local TV station RCTI, told the Associated Press news agency.

He said that advertisers were not interested, because the action would be happening in the middle of the night in Indonesia, and medal hopes for local athletes were considered poor.

Indonesia will be represented by 39 athletes in the Athens games, with its greatest chance of a medal thought to be in badminton.

It is unclear whether any Indonesian stations will be showing recorded highlights of the games.