What do people really want?
I wonder, though, how he knows what people want. The number of advertisements a show receives is in no way a measure of its popularity amongst the viewing public. All such figures prove is that marketing executives approve of the programme, or that the programme mirrors what the advertisers believe people like.
In other words, media producers and advertising agencies first interpret and then dictate what the average viewer is supposed to enjoy. Given that producers and advertisers have a roughly similar profile – educated, urban and professional – it is not surprising that they tend to concur on what they think are the aesthetics and interests of a hundred and fifty million people.
These millions of faceless people, only a fraction of whom are either educated or live in an urban setting, could not be more different from the advertising executives and the media tycoons. It follows, therefore, that their aesthetics are probably quite different from what we imagine. Unfortunately, it is currently quite impossible to identify genuine audience preferences since no existing opinion poll covers the country comprehensively. The fact that a recent effort concluded that KTN is Pakistan’s most popular channel shows that these exercises are far from credible and are, in fact, frankly incredible.
Until the methods of gathering information on such subjects are expanded to somehow reach the country’s rural population, the poor and the generally overlooked, the best one can say of results obtained through random-digit telephone surveys or questionnaires is that they reflect the interests of the people of a certain city, class or background.
Media networks force-feed the audience with entertainment and news programming. In doing so, they not only subliminally indoctrinate the audience by removing options, they also mould that audience’s interests. If my choice lies between 50 versions of household drama, situational comedy or romance telefilm, I will end up watching at least a fraction, even if my real area of interest is science or agriculture – on which there is virtually no local programming. Asked which shows I prefer, I’ll refer to the most bearable of the available options rather than the programmes I’d like to see but nobody wants to produce.
A case in point is the disproportionately high number of television programmes concerning politics. Talk shows, interviews, analyses, discussion fora, face-offs … the number of ways our channels have found of revisiting the same sorry tale is quite ingenious, particularly in view of the fact that despite all the convolutions, Pakistani politics have for decades revolved around the same fundamental issues and families (if one can take the liberty of regarding the army as one big, not-so-happy family).
Are the people of Pakistan actually interested in such programming or do they watch it by default? There is currently no conclusive evidence either way. Certainly, speculating on the political scene is one of the nation’s favourite hobbies. On the other hand, the abysmally low number of people who bother to cast a vote is also a measure of their real interest in the political process.
It appears as though much of the country’s programming is geared towards the producers’ own interests. Because they are drawn to certain topics, they believe that so is everyone else. It’s time to investigate whether or not this is true. As in so many other areas, the relevance of millions of citizens is currently being overlooked.
—hmumtaz@dawn.com