INTERNATIONAL Children’s Day of Broadcasting (ICDB), (celebrated on the second Sunday of December every year), is all about encouraging young people to express their views and ensuring their opinions, thoughts and dreams are widely heard. This is done by increasing their access to the broadcast media and helping them master the technology, so that what they create and produce can be shared with a mass audience.
This year the day was celebrated on December 11, by the Pakistani media organizations by doing programmes on and about issues related to children. However, the real thrust and significance of ICDB is to empower young people to determine the content and style of the productions, radio or television, that they want — and to have control of the entire process of production. In this ideal ICDB scenario, the youth not only come up with the ideas, they write the script, work as technicians, direct, narrate and present the programmes.
Pakistan’s teenage age group (12-19) makes up 27 per cent of the country’s population. In a developing media environment, FM radio stations are increasing rapidly in all parts of the country as a popular and powerful channel for news and information dissemination. Bazm-e-Naunehal, Azm-e-Naunehal, (World of Children, Spirit of Children) produced by Campus Radio FM 107, based at Peshawar University’s Mass Communication faculty in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), was one programme that truly reflected the concept of ICDB.
Peshawar University has some 40,000 strong student bodies — resident on the campus and in the city’s surrounding areas, including some tribal areas. The FM station is run by the students of mass communications who present, produce and script the entire transmission. This year the older students worked with a pilot group of young broadcasters, aged 11 to 12, to give children total control of production to be presenters, compere, directors and script writers.
In recognition of the way life for thousands of Pakistan’s young people who have been radically transformed by October 8 earthquake, a key segment of the programme was recorded in the tented camp of Ghari Habibullah where 3000 internally displaced people are living. In this, the young interviewers from the Campus Radio team met with girls and boys, offering them the opportunity to express how the disastrous impact on their home communities and the new experiences of camp life, have altered forever their daily reality as well as their vision of the future. Campus Radio subsequently invited Peshawar school students to the studio to hear these recorded interviews. In a moving manner they expressed their solidarity with what the affected youth are going through. Expressing their views in Urdu, Pashto and English, the lively program turned out to be an unusual experience for the presenter as well as the listeners.
Giving young people ‘total control’ of transmission is a new concept which the broadcasters in our country are not yet prepared to do and can only be done with community radio stations. According to the young student producer of the Campus Radio, Ali Imran Bangash, “The radio series will continue into 2006, in partnership with Unicef. Programs will be on a variety of formats created around subject areas chosen by the youth broadcasters, entailing maximum participation in the process of program development.”
The radio still has the greatest reach of any of the mass media, especially in the rural areas as it gives voice to the concerns of communities, families and children. “The initiative is a prelude in Pakistan to broadening the vision of ICDB and further facilitating and involving children and youth in the entire programming process for broadcasting — so that this becomes a meaningful and positive experience for them, as well as playing a vital role in raising awareness about rights and development issues concerning children and young people,” says Julia Spry-Leverton, Communications Unicef Pakistan.
Today, Pakistan has a fairly developed media infrastructure with a number of radio and TV stations operating in public and private sectors, which means wider outreach, a stronger voice, and shared responsibility and ownership. Despite expansion in private sector, the situation on the ground, viz-a-viz children’s programming, has not changed.
Moreover, commercialism has set in and nothing comes for free. Financial resources become a major constraint as all channels do not have the funds in abundance to implement ideas as far as children’s programming is concerned. And no matter how hard they try, it’s difficult to get a children’s program sponsored for both radio and television. In this case it is difficult to convince the heads and the marketing departments of electronic media for free airtime for children’s programs.
Pakistan is entering the second phase of private sector electronic media liberalization and expansion. New social dynamics are being defined and new presidents are being set. Although at present the state-owned media still has an edge in terms of reach, private sector media is likely to over take it in terms of reach, influence and advertising revenues in the next few years. Even with the existing number of FM radio stations and private TV channels there are several thousands of hours of available air time that needs quality programming. With this growth in the private sector electronic media one can hope more and more time for children with channels having to fill in.
INTERNATIONAL Children’s Day of Broadcasting (ICDB), (celebrated on the second Sunday of December every year), is all about encouraging young people to express their views and ensuring their opinions, thoughts and dreams are widely heard. This is done by increasing their access to the broadcast media and helping them master the technology, so that what they create and produce can be shared with a mass audience.
