Nearly 70 percent of Pakistan’s population lives in villages. The
and livelihood of three-fourths of its people is provided by agriculture
allied occupations and 50 percent of the national income comes from
therefore, a great importance, especially those meant for specification
them. Both in terms of area and people covered, rural programmes have,
viewing groups,
The basic objectives of rural T.V. programmes can be summed
farming, agricultural implements, fertilizers, good-quality seeds, cottage
up as: to familiarise rural viewers with latest technical developments in
industries, rural development and weather forecast; to provide healthy
entertainment and to make the rural population aware of the importance of
education, personal hygiene and health and family welfare.
Why have our rural television programmes not been able to
reflect a genuine “ruralness”? Why does one get the impression that there
is no village atmosphere, no rural warmth, no fold flavour?
There are many factors contributing to this situation. First, the
community viewing scheme needs to be reviewed and revised. There are
at present about 13,000 community viewing sets in about 5.75lac villages
in Pakistan. Radio is more popular and effective because transistor sets are
portable and a farmer can take a set to wherever he may be working.
There are also problems like lack of regular power supply in rural
areas, shortage of manpower and machinery to repair sets and lack of
adequate space and proper viewing conditions.
Making programmes for community viewing, whether bearing
information, education or entertainment, call for a different approach,
attitude, methodology and technique. And this is not always possible for
want to adequate facilities and right kind of staff. .
Secondly, almost all the production centres of P.T.V. are located
in urban areas. Most of the producers come from the city and a majority
of participants too are drawn from urban areas. Naturally the cultural and
social moorings and hopes and aspirations of the rural folk are not
reflected in most of the programmes.
Last, the extensive relay system is highly centralised. What most
of the relay centres are able to offer to the viewers in rural and tribal areas
is only the programmes put out by the Lahore centre. And these shows are
more for the city dwellers, the urban elite, than for the rural masses. The
area-specific programmes produced and put out by P.T.V. stations, too,
do not go far enough to make up for this lacuna. These shows are telecast more according to the satellite time available after fulfilling other
commitments of P.T.V. than considering the viewing time of the rural
people. Besides, the staff and equipment provided at these centres are
inadequate and certainly not the best suited for the job.
An important group of rural viewers has observed: “The trouble
with many development programmes’… is that they are produced within
the studio often with urban men in rural garb. It is often an urban view of
rural programmes or a view of problems of urbanised villages.
Considering the immensity of the task of fighting poverty, we recommend
that more than half the time of P.T.V. must be related to development and
educational programmes”.
However, certain positive measures are likely to get concretised
in the near future. The current Five-Year Plan envisages for P.T.V., a
thrust on its software. This should make upto some extent the imbalance
between the hardware and software development. The present constraint in
respect of equipment resources and manpower may also be overcome.
Another important step is that each state capital will have a full-
fledged production studio with the capability to locally generate as well as
transmit its own programmes. In all, different centres would have local
programme production facility. Then all the relay transmitters in a
particular state would have the capability to relay through satellite or
micro-wave links the programmes originating from their respective state
capital. This means that viewers would be able to watch programmes a
least in the language of the state, if not the local language of the dialect
instead of in Urdu or in English.
The important group of rural viewers has made two major
I have limited facilities to record, produce and transmit its own programmes
suggestions. It has recommended that every low power transmitter should
at least for a short duration. But this would involve resources which
perhaps may not be forthcoming. The suggestion can be implemented
phases.
Nonetheless both these suggestions deserve careful considerac
if rural television is to fulfil its objective to uplift the villagers, s
and make them better informed citizens. “If implemented proper
Pakistan will have a unique system of television providing for national
well as regional and local identities. this system, utilising the technoly and visual potential of the medium, has perhaps no parallel, anywhere in
the world”.
The launching and activation of the New Technology has proved
a boon for P.T.V., enabling it to telecast more feature films and give
greater coverage to regional programmes.
While telecast of late night programmes was commenced long
back, P.T.V. is increasing in stages the number of Dramas per week to
ten.
S.T.N. is also playing a vital role in telecasting interesting
programmes even for rural areas. It also repeats all its programmes after
mid-night. The viewers who cannot watch the programme early, they can
enjoy the same later at night.
PTV-2 also telecast special programmes for farmers, students and
children. They also telecast programmes in various dialects. Different
people can enjoy different programmes in their own languages.
At present, Punjabi, Urdu and English news bulletins are on the
following times. The Urdu bulletin commences at 9:00 p.m. and English
new begins at 7:00 p.m. Punjabi news is in the air at 6:00 p.m. The
routine Urdu play is usually at 7:50 p.m.