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Amid some lively sparring in the session on Making Satellite Televison
accountable to public interest-setting and exchanging perspectives,
CFAR's Akhila Sivadas pointed out that the challenge today was to
create qualitative difference in response to what is currently being
shown on televison. While self regulation among broadcasters came
up as an viable alternative to perpetuating politically correct
gender equality on television, Sivadas also stressed on the need
for media education among citizens, particularly among children,
as one of the coping mechanisms to deal with conflicting messages
from TV.
The workshop turned out to be one of the rare forums in recent
days that heralded the implementation of conditional access in the
country with warm anticipation. "CAS is going to be real arbiter;
now we will really know where viewers are willing to put their money,"
Mukherjee said. Added Sivadas, "CAS will now determine whether the
channels' claim that viewer preferences dictate programming strategy
holds water."
Mukherjee stressed that media education should be integrated with
mainstream education so that kids learn to filter the messages that
they are constantly bombarded with, former Zee TV president and
now independent producer Madhavi Mutatkar opined that often parents
themselves do not filter out programmes that could be skipped by
children.
The result is echoed in studies done by CFAR which show that throughout
the country, televison viewing increasingly dominates out of school
activities making children restless, inattentive and distracted.
The studies also show that children are exposed to one dimensional
representation of the family, which is the site of oppression and
rigid sex role modelling. Blurring of distinction between the real
and the reel and excessive violence on screen is adding to the next
generation's skewed view of reality, the study indicates.
Prahlad Kakkar, who spoke on advertising and gender equality, said
that while some ads blatantly exploit the female form in advertising
and some play on skin colour, it is the more insidious messages
that certain ads convey which are more dangerous. "Don't get derailed
by the issue of the female form in advertising," he added, "It is
ads like the Surf (Lalitaji) ads which distract from the main issues
and implicitly question a woman's competence outside the home, reaffirm
her role as a homemaker."
The simplest way to change the current advertising mindset, he
said, would be to reject a product and run it out of the marketplace
or to mobilise celebrity support for a campaign against offending
ads, which would be more effective in generating public opinion.
UTV's Mehta, the only production house representative at the workshop,
defended the current crop of soaps saying they are the only ones
working today and that if they didn't evoke a strong emotional chord
with viewers, no one would be watching these. While Doordarshan
Mumbai station director Mukesh Sharma pointed out that his was the
only regional channel to take up issues like sex education on live
phone in interactive shows, Mehta countered that UTV's Shaka Laka
Boom Boom had taken a similar route by incorporating the theme of
tackling blindness by including a blind character in the serial.
Sharma however maintained that the public broadcaster's hands were
tied due to paucity of funds which do not allow DD to come up with
better quality programming. Secured funding to allow experimentation
needs a revenue stream like television sets license fees ( a proposal
recently rejected by the Centre). Sharma added that DD Mumbai had
nevertheless managed a revenue of Rs 250 million last fiscal.
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