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Once upon a time, we were fortunate to have PTV, it even exists today but has lost its soul for which it was part of our family ‘once upon a time’. The Ptv drama’s were near to life, which were realistic & entertaining as well, people were hooked with the TV set, specially during the drama hour, most famous serials were ‘Waris’, ‘Dhoop Kinarey’, ‘Ankahi’ and the list goes on. During early 80’s & early 90’s PTV saw its golden time, the last flick was from talented Shoaib Mansoor ‘Alpha Bravo Charlie’ which broke all commercial records in 1998.
After that our television set was bombarded with dozens of Channels & hundreds of drama’s, the TV industry was so commercialized that they forgot the viewers, now fancy dresses, houses like castles, jewelry, glamour, brand new cars, branded suiting has replaced the core of drama which was script once upon a time. Eventually the dramas became unpopular among the masses and the talk show hosts took masses like Pied piper.
The drama’s are now focused on land lords, industrialists & elite class, Today’s drama shows that all the people in this county are very rich, living in luxurious houses with all fantasies of life, this is something out of reality, most of the people live on a line just above poverty & far below luxury, As the modern drama give up the issues of common man, the common man has also given up watching these serials, because after watching life as un restrained fantasy the common man’s contentment is vaporized, the fall of TV drama’s is not only the void of entertainment for the common man, it is somehow linked with the sad demise of film industry as well, the thing known as “lolly wood” comprises of some seasonal kind of people, who call themselves artists, producing vulgar items which they call films, Thus for a common man in Pakistan, entertainment stuff which was already limited is now either vulgar or irrelevant. Both the movies & drama’s are not focusing common man in their scripts, movies revolve around thugs and whores, drama’s focus on the elite class.
I partially agree with you and that’s because of Starplus influence on Pakistani media however things have started to improve and now along with elite touch you would see the media covering issues of poor people as well. It would be unfair to generalize entire media like this.
Though I am not much into tv now, but whenever I try to watch any drama on ATV or PTV, it seems that they focus more on glamour than on script or story. Another thing which irritates most of the viewers is the long commercial breaks :x
There is always a difference between quantity and quality .
and quantity always deteriorates quality.
Also in the initial stages , the vigor of innovation , brings freshness and raw momentum of a force that is necessary for the long term growth.
Beside Pakistan’s intellect , ie the collective intellect , always had a distinct identity , it still has , its just that its sometimes gets underneath the onslaught of mediocre copy cats .
Pakistan is still miles ahead ,for example just consider music , a relatively untrained Shiraz Uppal sings and beats the commercially trained mass-produced singing products from across the border.
I agree that element of glamour is given more focus. I would like to add to the discussion that mushrooming of production house and T.V. channels in Pakistan has deteriorated the standards of Pakistani television dramas. Suffice it to say, quality has been lost.
Shahid & Afat what do you think about the inspiration we have got from Indian soaps.
Tanzeel, Indian soaps have captured the essence of typical glorified subcontinental family disputes. There are less dialogues. There are unnecessarily more gestures. There are more superficial facial expressions. If one dispute ends, another disputes appears to continue the soap. Indian soaps are playing with the psyche of the normal housewives of subcontinent.
..its a one time fancy , as soon as the producer realizes it , he reverts back to the ” typical ” Pakistani flavor ….and more successfully.
Even though unfortunately Pakistani TV has been influenced by Indian media, it is still a lot better than Indian media. The degradation of Pakistan TV is very unfortunate and that needs to change. TV all around the world has followed a similar trend with exceptions of some countries. I am not regular watcher of Pakistani programs but I hope its not as bad as Indian TV and I also hope it gets better.
Fact is that PTV and Atv both, are just advertising tools. Their priorities are just making money, not audience and that is why audience have lift it.