The people’s television?
Editorial
Stabroek News
January 10, 2003
Banyan, the innovative, Caribbean-oriented Trinidad television group, once put together, for an informal media conference, a film aimed at exposing the Region’s lack of social commitment or creative vision in the programming and production of public television. The film’s title was “inside de people t.v”. The opening sequence showed a working class family watching their local station’s 7 o’clock evening news. Suddenly, there was their teenaged son being interviewed , live, during a disturbance in downtown Port-of-Spain. “Wait!” the mother says, sitting up in alarm, “ But is what we son doin’ inside de people t.v.” ?
The people’s television? Did she mean television for the benefit of the people? Banyan’s point was that, in the Caribbean, television is anything but that. The mother’s alarm at “de people t.v.” swallowing up her son was proof of that fact. Throughout the Region, the ordinary citizen’s perception of television is that it is clearly not “the people’s t.v.” because it belongs to someone else: the government, big business, foreign interests. Them, not us.
When we remember that the equipment of our television stations comes from abroad, that the skilled labour to run and service it comes from, or is at least trained, abroad; that the broadcast material (often as much as 90 % of it ) is purchased from abroad or fed to us from foreign sources; and that the real beneficiaries (in cultural, political and economic terms) live abroad, it becomes clear why local television is not the people’s t.v.
What is television for anyway? Is it for information? (purvey the pabulum of CNN or of any of the formulaic, superficial, U.S.-based news reports and no one will mind. Tell the truth from another perspective and offend the political powers-that-be). Is it for education? (cater to popular prejudices or question them and be ignored or vilified). Is it for entertainment? (Go for the ‘show business’ model or the ‘soaps’ or risk losing your sponsors). Television is, of course, a medium for all of these purposes and more : above all, it should make us think. Whether we like it or not, television has become the most powerful medium for shaping societies’ attitudes, aims and desires. Only this can explain its enduring fascination and importance for governments as well as for private enterprise. What matters, however , is the way it is used : the programming behind the production.
It is not an exaggeration to say that television has the capacity to determine, for generations, the way in which entire societies will grow and think. Lazy, ill-considered or careless programming can create lazy-minded and superficial attitudes as well as unhealthy tastes and prejudices that may persist as a social pattern for a very long time even after mistakes have been duly acknowledged. That kind of damage can be compared with illness caused by the eating of unhealthy food. No responsible parent would feed a child spoiled or rotten meat : why would we feed our children poisonous or damaging cultural junk food ? The habit of junk-viewing, like junk-eating, can be addictive. Witness the obdurate appetite we develop for even the trashiest and most salacious foreign t.v. ‘shows’ once these become part of the regular television diet. So why do we have so little healthy indigenous programming or production ?
One obvious answer is the lack of money vis-à-vis the high cost of production. The big overseas networks are able to sell us their products at a fraction of the cost of local production. This is how it works. The U.S. networks ( by far the biggest suppliers ) , having satisfied their local markets, pick up overseas sales as bonus revenues, since the production and programming costs for these have already paid their way in profits made at home. In fact, many of these ( like “The days of our lives”) can be sold below cost ( a marketing strategy known , significantly, as ‘dumping’ ) since a taste for such cultural food can thereby be inculcated and a passive, ‘hooked’ overseas clientele established. There is a worrying similarity between this process and that of the commercially successful marketing strategies of the cigarette or soft drink manufacturers, or for that matter, with the drug trade. In the Caribbean, the replacement or cancellation of even a single episode of a popular American soap opera can create a log-jam of irate telephone calls. Similar treatment of a local television series (except in the case of a cricket test match) leaves the viewing public relatively unmoved.
The broadcasting responsibilities of poor, so-called ‘third-world’ states are, therefore, enormous. “By the process of osmosis America is destroying not only our television, but our values and our very culture.... American television has made the development of [our] cultural identity almost impossible.” That isn’t the complaint of a ‘leftist’ spokesman for some ‘banana republic’ or of a dependent third-world or Caribbean community worried about its own cultural development. It is a Canadian commentator, H. Connor, writing in Television Quarterly (vol. 6 #1 1967 pp. 50-51 ). As early as 1965, at a meeting of experts on the Use of Space Communications by the Mass Media ( UNESCO House, Paris, 6th -10th December 1965 ) UNESCO was considering the possible effects upon the developing world of the impact of communications satellites.
The Director General said at that meeting : “I believe such [international] co-operation must extend beyond the techniques of communication to embrace also a common concern with the content of what is transmitted.”
Communications technology has now far outstripped the concern with content. Programming objectives seldom coincide with a nation’s educational, cultural or devlopmental goals. This is true even of the rich, industrialised nations. We in the Caribbean, always more acted upon than acting, need urgently to re-establish those priorities which “the people’s t.v.” should serve : literacy ( both practical and imaginative ) , education and meaningful information, rather than ‘factoids’, and entertainment designed to heighten cultural awareness and critical intelligence. The involvement of our cultural and educational institutions in public television and radio production and programming should be considered essential. The benefits that would accrue from committed, indigenous television programming and production are virtually without limit. Here are some of the ‘multiplier effects’ :
* Stimulation of the public appetite for good, indigenous t.v. and the building of a critical audience for it.
* More effective control over the ‘electronic blackboard’. More effective use of t.v. for education.
* Greater public demand for relevance in media production.
* Impetus for the growth of media and theatre and performing arts, encouraging the development of a reservoir of local creative talent.
* Employment in both the technical and cultural fields.
There is a genuine public perception of the role of television as a social force which Caribbean people would like to be Caribbean-minded and orientated. Television programmes, made with a Caribbean eye - a genuine ‘People’s t.v.’ - supported by both the private and public sectors, with the participation of the cultural, technical and educational institutions of our Region, should be high on the agenda of Caribbean development.
