My good friend writer Shakoor Majid is a diligent media-watcher.
He always reads other writers’ works and watches dramas both at the theatre as well as on television.
He was trying to follow all the TV shows and dramas during this Eid holiday when, one evening, while watching a tele-film, it occurred to him that the plot and theme of the film were very similar to those of a drama serial he watched long ago on TV.
According to Shakoor, incidents such as this are bound to happen. He opines that about 5,000 TV dramas were created since the tele-boom in Bangladesh about 17 years ago.
That’s an amazing figure as far as TV content is concerned. 5,000 dramas! Do we even have that many script writers?
Even if we do, do they have that many different stories to tell?
If they did, that would be an amazing feat, but my friend doesn’t seem to think they do; he thinks there are not that many stories among the minds of the limited number of writers of this country’s entertainment industry.
I, although, barely watch these shows, strongly support his view. But the fact that I barely watch them actually says a lot about the quality and content of Bangladeshi TV.
I wish I could sit before the TV set and spend some time watching some quality programs that would take me away from the hullaballoo of our mechanised dotcom schedule, but when I do, I find the programs lacking in content and quality.
Programs are outdated
It seems to me that our TV producers aren’t choosing the right kind of content writers to cater to our ever-changing lives and lifestyle.
Change? You may ask. Yes, your life and style may change, but how could your hunger for entertainment change with those?
News is news; dramas are dramas which have always been so since the era of the Greeks and Romans; and a program is a program since the time the popular program Ittiyadi came out with flying colours on BTV.
At least that’s what my friend, a radio broadcaster, RJ Kibria, told me during the just-ended Eid vacation.
He was watching Ittiyadi on the day after Eid day and found the program to be, as he put it, “extremely boring and outdated” for this generation.
The existence of too many channels is having a negative impact on the minds of the audience, compelling them to turn to other means of entertainment on broadcast media
He said the same set of people was acting in various “educative” and “sermonising” dramatic episodes, making satiric comments about the wrongs of society as well as the establishment.
There was, he said, “nothing new” in the producer’s approach or style. He was performing the same thing as he was offering 27 years ago.
I heard similar comments about the age-old program that although it has been there for a long time, it is now failing to retain viewership. There’s a need for the maker to think differently if he wants to keep it on air, they say.
Too many options
Having said that, I feel that the number of TV channels is also a factor in terms of making the experience of watching TV disappointing.
I tried it myself: If you flick from channels one to 25, you may not feel like settling on any one of them.
The sheer number confuses and overwhelms me and I don’t know which is broadcasting what.
I came to know about Ittiyadi from a newspaper advertisement. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know about it.
I can imagine that some viewers tend to avoid watching TV because it’s so difficult to concentrate on one channel when there are so many options.
I feel that the TV content providers or the channel authorities would do well to think of a single platform for marketing what they want to offer. The viewers will go to that platform and choose the program of their choice. It may be an OTT (over-the-top) model of providing TV content.
Otherwise, the existence of too many channels is having a negative impact on the minds of the audience, compelling them to turn to other means of entertainment on broadcast media.
I have mentioned only two kinds of programs here, but there are several such shows and programs that require serious attention of the makers.
Producers should be able to create or market their content in such a way that we, the common viewers, can watch them in one single go.
Watching one drama should be a single journey; we don’t want to watch several dramas on several channels at the same time. I hope producers start thinking about these issues.
Ekram Kabir is a fiction writer.
