WHY does our TV have a fixation with politicians and with Panama? On the one hand, the cumulative effect of all TV programmes is that all politicians are nincompoops and fools; on the other hand they focus on them. Breaking news wisdom tells us ‘Imran Khan has reached airport’, another bit of this ‘news’ gives us the world-shaking development that Nawaz Sharif has reached Lahore; another piece of ‘breaking nonsense’ informs us that the opposition has staged a walk – something that occurs daily.

Why cannot our TV channels give us cultural news? Just watch CNN and the BBC and you will find little of politics and a lot of cultural coverage of Africa and many parts of the world. Now our TV channels do not have children’s programme. When PTV had a monopoly, people watched children’s programme, hosted by Sohail Rana and Nayyara Noor. There were also cultural and literary debates, and Neelam Ghar was in a class by itself, so was Alif Noon, a sophisticated comedy.

Now there are hardly any comedy programmes, and music has disappeared from TV. All we have talk shows in which so-called experts babble about a subject done to death – Panama, Panama and Panama. Could they spare us this nonsense?

Ansar Ahmad Khan
Hyderabad

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2017