Monday, June 13, 2005

After being bowled over by Yasin Malik and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in Karachi, I was delighted to see an ad in Sunday's Dawn announcing that Aaj TV would run a live transmission of the Kashmir symposium being held in Islamabad. UGH! Apologies for that hideously long sentence.

I spent about 15 minutes in a solitary corner of the house considering whether I should fly to Islamabad for two hours in the hope of meeting Yasin and the Mirwaiz. Aaj TV's live transmission made me decide not to go. BAD MOVE. There are times in one's life when it is unhealthy for better sense to prevail.

The live transmission was meant to begin at 5:30 pm. Several of us parked ourselves in front of the TV in anticipation ... Until 6:30 pm, we were treated to the Sindh Budget Speech, mindless advertising, and YET ANOTHER SHOW ABOUT MEERA. I looked up Aaj TV's number online and got on the phone. While I was on hold, listening to bubblegum music, Hameed Haroon popped up on the screen, and I hung up the phone.

The programme was delayed by an hour but Aaj TV did not think it was necessary to inform its viewers that something was up. They have a persistent ticker running at the bottom of the screen and any idiot could have typed in one sentence informing viewers about the delay. This is way too much to ask for, as in Pakistan, the consumer is the advertiser, not the viewer. When the show finally got off the ground, Professor Abdul Ghani Bhat and Yasin Malik were interrupted, mid-sentence, every few minutes, by the following:

1. SunSip Timechecks
2. News Breaks with several headlines and earth-shatteringly important announcements about Pakistan's 18 member junior hockey squad (every single name was read out, s l o w l y), and something about PTCL's ongoing saga
3. An Aaj TV logo animation
4. An Aaj TV exclusive presentation animation
5. Advertisements

The show ended abruptly after exactly 58 minutes. Aaj TV did not even bother to announce that the "live transmission" had ended. We kept sitting there like idiots, thinking that the drama that was now on air was merely a trailer.

I called "Recorder House" again, consumed with rage and asked to speak with the Head of Programming at Aaj TV, who of course, wasn't in as it was a Sunday. Got connected to some juvenile character who said that he had orders from above, and that the satellite time had ended. Tough luck for all of us losers who tuned in to watch something meaningful and got nothing but grief. I ranted and raved until the guy finally handed over the cell phone number of the Director, Programming. Decided to wait till the morning to call him ...

Did so at 9:00 am today. The Director Programming was patient and listened quietly. He said that he agreed with most of what I said but I was still fed some nonsense about the trials and tribulations of running a TV channel. My bone of contention is that there are times when you HAVE to sacrifice commercial interests to do the right thing. And forget the ads, there weren't that many of them anyway ... who in $!&@'s name decided that the 18 member hockey squad was more relevant than Yasin Malik talking about the Kashmiri freedom struggle? Why couldn't the hockey news and the PTCL news have waited until later? THE KASHMIR TRANSMISSION WAS THE NEWS, DAMMIT. What better content could Aaj TV have hoped for? The Kashmiri leadership is in Pakistan on an historic visit - someone PLEASE explain to me, like I'm 5 years old, the logic behind Aaj TV's disruption of their speeches, mid-sentence, every few minutes to regale us with "news" that every other channel was broadcasting? Yes, I know that Pakistani media is financed through advertising and I also understand that a lot of stuff goes on at a TV channel, and I also know that there are infrastructure constraints, and blah, blah, blah. What prevented Aaj TV from updating their ticker to keep their viewers informed, and from putting a stop to the internal Aaj TV adverts, and mind-numbing news, in the light of the ongoing situation? It is alarming that a heavyweight media enterprise could not respond in a more appropriate manner. TV stations should not run live transmissions until they can learn to handle less than perfect circumstances.

UFFFFFFF! The answers, as usual, are blowing in the wind ...

Posted by BeanZ | Permalink: 2:01 PM |