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Prime Time
Television:
Medium of profits or medium for the masses?
Truly,
the more frequently travelled road is the one where television programmes
generate profits and vice versa. With numbers exploding in terms of the
increase in programming time, adspend, and the number of TV households,
the scenario is logistically frenetic and logically euphoric.
Day after day, night after night, television displays a vast range of
consumer products and employs a multitude of shocks and teases, and the
only purpose of this spectacle is to promote the habit of viewership.
If the entire world can be seen simultaneously, and if all mankinds’
joy and suffering are available on CNN, MTV, or the Sunday night movie,
then nothing else matters. And despite the clutter of channels and programmes,
“frequency and reach” strategies ensure that everyone gets to
share the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
| Some channels have encountered an alarming and unhappy gap between intention and result, and often the cause has been the incorrect role-definition of profits in their overall mission statements. Moreover, beyond the confines of the viewership ratings system, which covers a sample of a few thousand people across a limited number of cities, there exists an India of villages |
Viewers no longer despise advertising as an intrusion, as they did in
the early days of television. Much faster, more slickly crafted, more
gorgeous than ever, the commercials now seem not to interrupt a given
television narrative, but rather to set the pace for it. In fact, some
TV commercials sell audio-visual entertainment (and controversy?) more
than the products they advertise. Compare the budgets of a half-hour episode
and a 30-second commercial and you will see the significance of the process.
In a sense, therefore, the line between programming and advertising is
gradually becoming blurred, and it could be hypothesized that audiences
are being led into a kind of stupefaction which gives them no prior or
extrinsic choice about what they see on the screen. Theorists say that
every medium and structure has, what is known as a “break boundary”,
at which the system suddenly changes into another, or passes some point
of no return in its dynamic processes. That is why the bubble bursts,
the rainbow blurs into white light, and the pot of gold disappears.
To my mind, the road less travelled is the one where maximization of revenue-based
profits is not the only destination and where profit also translates as
social benefits. And you cannot avoid this because of the continuous social
debate between the advocates of high culture and the defenders of popular
culture.
The promoters of high culture criticise mass culture as having harmful
effects on both, the individual consuming it and society as a whole: someone
labelled Mr. Murdoch’s global satellite expansion plan as “Sky
Trek: The Next De-generation”. The users of popular culture, on the
other hand, reject this criticism. The defence of popular culture rests
on two value judgements: that it reflects and expresses the aesthetic
and other wants of many people; and that all people have a right to the
culture they prefer.
The plea, therefore, is for cultural democracy. Sounds good, but what
does it mean in our context? Do we continue to believe that Hindi film-based
programmes should be encouraged? Or do we have more of classical music
and dance? Do we include socially relevant programmes? Or should we just
apply a kind of Nehruvian philosophy to our programming mix and hope for
the probability that it is viable? I raise these questions because some
channels have encountered an alarming and unhappy gap between intention
and result, and often the cause has been the incorrect role-definition
of profits in their overall mission statements.
Moreover, beyond the confines of the viewership ratings system, which
covers a sample of a few thousand people across a limited number of cities,
there exists an India of villages. And this makes us question the extent
to which present market forces recognise rural India as a segment of potential
consumers and television viewers.
In other words, television will have to be seen as a space where there
is an intersection of economic imperatives, cultural traditions, and political
impositions. Perhaps, while discussing the future of television in India,
we must also consider the future of India in television. Television represents
a vast landscape, the roads long and winding, and not without potholes.
And there is no denying that there are questions that our generation needs
to answer for the sake of future generations. As one mythical icon of
music asked, “Where do the children play?” Maybe, as another
legendary folk-singer said, “the answer, my friend, is blowing in
the wind”.
Akash Khurana