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Pakistanis yearn for good old Indian
TV
By Nadeem Iqbal
ISLAMABAD
- Accusations are traded, diplomats are regularly
expelled, and their soldiers trade fire routinely.
Pakistan and India have exploited every possible way to
snipe at each other, including the reciprocal banning of
television channels.
But it is the consumers of
such electronic entertainment who are asking for change,
consumers like Madiha Sundhu, an information-technology
specialist. She says she is tired of trying to follow
English-language channels and wants the year-old ban on
Indian channels lifted, so that she can watch programs
in a language she understands - spoken Urdu and Hindi,
after all, are very similar.
Television viewers
such as Sundhu, whose mother tongue is Urdu, have been
demanding from their local cable-television operators
the resumption of Indian programs, and the operators in
turn have relayed this demand to the Pakistani
government.
Officially, there are 865
cable-television operators who service some 2 million
subscribers in Pakistan's urban centers. But the true
figure is likely very much larger.
"Provide
entertainment," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed
advised the cable operators while rejecting their
demand, "but not at the cost of national integrity."
The minister categorically stated that no Indian
channel would be permitted to be aired in Pakistan "due
to their [Indians'] unabated baseless propaganda
campaign against Pakistan".
Television
journalist Muhammad Malik supports the ban, and says
there is a distinct slant against Pakistan in the
content generated by the private Indian channels.
It was after the attack on the Indian parliament
in December 2001, when Indian television channels began
airing accusations linking the attack to Pakistan, that
the government banned all Indian channels - news and
entertainment. It replaced them with 49 foreign channels
that cable operators have been asked to broadcast. But
these are in English, Arabic, Chinese or Turkish, and
find little appeal among viewers.
Some viewers
are also complaining about what they call obscene or
pornographic material on some channels. In response, the
Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA)
directed the cable operators to use digital mosaicking
to mask out undesirable segments of the programs.
Beyond the politics, there is economics involved
as well. Jaffer Mehdi, a marketing executive, said: "The
decision to ban Indian channels is not only to stop
propaganda but is also a commercial one - to create
space for the local private channels in the country."
Indeed, a PEMRA official said, "As more and more
Pakistani advertisers were going to Indian channels to
promote their products, that made it impossible for the
private Pakistani channels to survive."
Mehdi
supports the ban, and his view is that the similarity in
language between Hindi and Urdu leads to Indian channels
promoting Western culture more effectively than Western
channels do.
Zahid Ahmed, a cable-television
operator, emphasizes the huge influence of the language
factor, but provides an insider's view. He said that
despite the PEMRA directive, and in response to
subscribers' demands, cable-television operators in
dense urban areas continue to relay Indian channels, or
broadcast Indian films off pirated video compact discs
to their subscribers.
The size of the audience
drives this demand. According to Pakistan Television
(PTV) statistics, there are about 3.5 million television
sets in the country. The Consumer Rights Commission of
Pakistan, a non-governmental organization, estimates
that 53 percent of all households regularly watch
television.
But a study of electronic media in
South Asia conducted by the United Nations Development
Program in 2001 found that 73 percent of households in
urban areas, and 25 percent in rural areas, own
television sets.
A household usually pays about
Rs300 (about US$5) as a monthly subscription for its
cable-television connection. Cable operators pay a hefty
$900 as an initial license fee, renewable annually for
$450, and are required to broadcast at least 20
channels, so the cost of operation can be considerable.
Hence the need for operators such as Zahid Ahmed
to feel the pulse of his subscribers' viewership habits.
Yet the television landscape in Pakistan could
change sooner than Madiha Sundhu expects. PEMRA has
invited applications for the setting up of satellite
channels to telecast programs in other countries. This
followed the launch in January of Pakistan's first
commercial satellite, PAKSAT-1, whose transponders will
be available to private companies.
There are
five Pakistani-owned satellite television channels -
Indus TV, ARY TV, Geo TV, Uni-TV and KTN - but as PEMRA
does not yet issue licenses for private channels, these
telecast from overseas locations with content created in
Pakistan.
Their being able to broadcast from
Pakistan is still up in the air as the government
wrestles with issues of cross-media licensing - some of
these channels are owned by media groups - and the
threat of PTV losing commercial revenue to the private
Pakistani channels.
Information Secretary Anwar
Mehmood says that restrictions will be removed, but
remains ambiguous about a date.
The private
channel operators appear more confident about their
future than the government does, as stations such as ARY
and Geo already compete with PTV for viewership,
although some PTV serials are very popular in India.
They believe additional revenue could be
generated from the Indian market provided practical
commercial interests can prevail over political
one-upmanship.
(Inter Press
Service)
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