Anyone who would be writing this article and has got some friends in Television Media industry especially in their marketing departments, the author should remain anonymous .There are maximum chances that the article writer would lose some friends in some of the TV channels .Only a decade ago, Television channels were owned by the public sector and there was no such thing as privately owned TV channels. The industry was small and ideas of current affairs and even of entertainment programming were conceived as per the policy guide lines of relevant government departments .The participation of private sector and of the human resource of private sector was almost negligible. That era was not considered as the era of innovation and creativity, the freedom of thought was a mere dream and execution of radical ideas was just wish for the inspiring and experienced directors and producers.
Surprisingly in the last years of the President Mr. Pervaiz Musharaf , whole media landscape of Pakistan changed .It was like a new dawn and screens were changed like through some overnight magic. Electronic media have now started enjoying the freedom to produce and show what has never been shown in the past in Pakistan.
In this decade of getting the maximum ratings, the media industry has passed through a hard evolutionary period. The fever initially was of News and Current Affairs but later as it always happened; people got bored of monotonous screens .In that period, a competition between the different genres have started. People have started to pick and choose and the remote control holders became the driving force and decisive authority about the type of programming they wanted to see on their screens.
After this evolutionary period and hard times and teething issues, those have been resolved .The media is tamed down and people are no more freak about the News and current affairs but the viewers are also trained and tamed to a great extent and now they can tell, which program has got a richness of content and what would they prefer to see. Family viewing of TV in households is culturally and socially very common. People mostly with one household TV set like to watch their favorite programs in the evening in family gathering.
The latest situation of the electronic media industry is interesting, GEO News is picking up its ratings after it has passed through the most crucial time, ARY news is getting good ratings and along with Dunya News and Samaa , Express News is also claiming to be on top . Aaj TV is struggling to remain on top in the second tier channels
The entertainment genre which is normally comprised of Drama channel is equally interesting; it has however given some dynamic positioning to Television production industry of Pakistan. As of today PTV home is leading because of its terrestrial and satellite reach and HUM TV is going head-on with ARY digital and Urdu 1 Just some inches below on the viewership graph.
A-Plus is leading among the second tier and ATV not to forget, its terrestrial reach , the struggling channels are TV 1 and others .Last but not the least GEO entertainment and Geo Kahani waiting for their fate to come back in the main stream .
Author: Maqbool Mirza -about author www.maqboolmirza.com