MEDIA WATCH
I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Conspiracy theorists, take a hike: if there is one single thing that determines the content of television, it is the class that is producing it and the class advertisers intend to see it: the urban middle-class.
This places an immense pressure, whether they are in government or opposition, on centre-left parties like the ANP and the PPP, who attempt to appeal to the working classes. At the moment, the vexed reader, reading this off a paper or a screen in a large urban centre, might say that the reason for hostile reception on TV is that the performance of these parties left much to be desired. True, but even if they had fabulously talented key executives, these parties still wouldn’t have quite cut it on TV. Because their concept of development is distributed and directed towards a particular class. It won’t be a motorway-like shiny toy that gets good press; it would be a subsidy or income support or investment in a power project whose maturation horizon would extend beyond the term of the government itself. None of these things can be captured on film.
Nowhere is this state of affairs more visible than on shows that have a live audience. Since it does not make sense for producers to run around getting representative samples of the public at large, they just let anyone in from the city (Lahore, Karachi or Islamabad) where the studio is based. For youth programmes, they sometimes ask the students of a local college to come in droves to fill the seats up.
Dunya News’ Kamran Shahid is fond of such programmes. There is much cheering, jeering, heckling and, occasionally, catcalling from the audience. And Mr Shahid at times even gives up the pretence of moderating the show and just lets either the guests cut each other open or declares open season on the guests for the audience.
This issue of class division was most apparent on a recent programme of his (On the Front, 13th April, Dunya News.) The audience: youth. The guests: youth leaders. The latter were literally youngsters, not the usual PML-N youth wing leaders like Capt Safdar and Abid Sher Ali and the PTI’s Abrarul Haq.
Though the PML-N and PTI had supporters from amongst the audience, the PPP’s spirited young man had, understandably, a tough crowd on his hands.
The real struggle, then, was between the League and the PTI. The moment I want to highlight is when one of the PTI’s supporters got up and asked the Leaguer about the party’s plan to build five hundred thousand housing units, which were intended to provide employment opportunities for the youth. Are the youth going to build these houses, he asked. Woh ab mistreeon ka kaam karenge? The audience, at least his part of it, lapped it up and placed the onus on representative.
Now, though the PML-N man did field the question well, his answer was that housing units of this scale require engineers, town planners, accountants, management professionals etc. That, he implied, was the employment for the youth that his party was talking about.
Here is the difference. Had it been a PPP plan, their spokesperson wouldn’t have been defensive.
Where did the masons and bricklayers who worked for a pittance to build the house the PTI-loving youngster lived in came from? A portion of that crew would have been much, much younger than him. Does this bespectacled young man, when he is getting the groceries or just hanging about in a market with his friends, notice the daily wagers, pickaxe, spades and shovels in tow, getting ready to go home after a full day’s unsuccessful attempt to find work? Some of these, if you were to give them a culture-fair IQ test, would turn out to be brighter than him.
What, really, is funny when a project gives construction workers work? Or sanitation workers? And this bit about the accompanying white-collar employment opportunities for the youth could have been given by the Leaguer after he had cut the questioner down to size. He had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.
Both question and response were moulded by the class from where they emerged. As does, I say at the risk of sounding emphatic, most of what you see on TV.
