Turning the Idiot Box into a Useful Audiovisual Experience

"Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads," George Bernard Shaw.
These words seem familiar. Aren't we living in a society where every word we read has a background? It is always essential reading, the most important thing. The audacity of expression is long lost, but we have also lost the courage to read what we wish, what is not essential reading, not a ‘must read’ in order to float easily in the sea of absurdity. Do we need to change? Yes we do. Reading the book nobody reads leads to indulgence in discourse nobody understands, though everybody approves. This brings the society at large into a circular discourse. The argument revolving around the news of the day. Thus, terrorism, power-tariff, corrupt politicians, and so on. This is the taste of our times. We have become men "of great common sense and good taste", social robots. We talk the talk most of the time. This makes us socially acceptable, but the cost is "originality and moral courage", as Shaw puts it.
Who leads this circle of anomalies? The media. The media is the book of our times. Every anchor is running a chapter.
We have become spectators of our own happenings. The lead role of the media is nothing new in sub-continent. This country has emerged and lived through confusing times. From the very onset there was a lot of external and unknown elements in the national discourse. The division of India, which became the Independence of India and Pakistan, entailed one of the biggest migrations in human history. Both of the new nations, Pakistan being newer than the counterpart, needed information about these deadly travels. The need was satisfied through the media and also literature, which until recently had the tragedy of the Partition as its most dominant theme. Even earlier the unification of Muslims across the globe remained one important theme for major Muslim thinkers/politicians, whose one important vehicle was the newspaper.
This defined the taste of the new nation as well as the role of its media. Current columns in Urdu newspapers are a continuation of this lead role. These roles are in dire need of change with the growth of private television, armed with live talk shows. The dominant discourse has also changed a lot. We are living in a state of war, with no definite enemy in sight. The common man doesn’t really know why his child can’t play around the way he did? What has changed? The structure of television gives us a great advantage to answer this and similar vital questions posed by the traumatised audience looking for guidance and fellow feeling.
The limitations of private TV are not difficult to understand. Private TV does know that it is the new book we all are supposed to read. What it doesn’t understand though is that due to a decade of training in self-censorship the very fabric of our self-proclaimed independent media is not fit to become the book we need to read. Private TV is new. It is not a time factor, but rather one of capacity. The workforce this medium is getting is mainly from print. Current lead TV anchors are people from print. They deal with audiovisual as they used to deal with print in the good old days. But their problem gets deeper when they are asked to do what they have never done in print, in their self-designed columns. It is live interviewing. Interview is the most difficult art for a media professional. Its scale gets even higher when it is audiovisual, reaching the highest when it comes to live interviews, and especially group interviews. This is what talk shows affecting many lives are all about. A fashion talk show is different from the ones that are based upon the day’s happenings and these are also being tragic, frustrating most of the time.
The first and foremost requirement for a TV show that provides its audience with content worth watching, is orientation training for the hot shots, known as prime time TV anchors. The men and women who have either a useless narrative, sarcastic style, or who imitate US talk shows. The aggressive style of many female anchors is nothing but an imitation of other countries. This is an ethical issue. These guys need to know the ethics of their job. This ethics is based upon social responsibility towards the audience; of not taking the audience as wet clay waiting to be moulded by the magic wands they carry in their words. They must understand the reason behind the whole media structure and specifically the needs of the Pakistani audience.
No matter how big the egos of the famous anchors, they still need training. They need an introduction to TV journalism, to the art of concept building for programs and then the selection of topics. This effort should be supported by intense audience research. This is something the whole world is doing except Pakistan. Audience research is an integral element of modern TV. It becomes an imperative when live talk shows aiming at day-to-day life affecting issues are aired.
Once they get this conceptual training they need to learn how to behave on this cool medium as Marshal McLuhan defined it quite early. It is harmful to shout on TV. It is counter productive for the participants, but fatal for the host. If the host remains aggressive all the time or tries to be sly, it won’t bring any good. There is one last genre that needs to be simply supplanted on the TV screen, no matter how useful he seems to be. This is the insipid narrator who poses as a historian, politician, philosopher, academician, reporter, philanthropist, human rights activist, and defender of national and religious ideology; the all in one package guy.
To cut the long story short it is high time to give the people their medium back. To make a serious effort in getting a TV for the audience. To give them a book to read that is everybody reads and understands.