TV THOUGHTS: Sunday morning TV versus Sunday's dailies; scary images of power riots on TV channels

Television channels on Sunday morning reported the details of how thousands of people withstood the rains bravely in Faisalabad and waited all night for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry whose motorcade from Islamabad took 22 hours to reach Faisalabad. There was understandably no live coverage of the motorcade.
The Chief Justice was scheduled to address the Faisalabad Bar at 5pm on Saturday, but in point of fact he addressed the over 5000 lawyers at the convention at 7am. So that was the story for a greater part of Sunday, and many of us heard him in detail in the news bulletins on Geo, Aaj TV and Ary One World.
The print media reported the speech of the Chief Justice on Monday morning....but TV viewers heard him on Sunday and needles to say that he is heard with sustained and extraordinary interest. This is a news story that has been strong since it began early in March (the 9th)and we are now here in the fourth week of June.
Some lawyers raised political slogans during the speech of the Chief Justice and he reprimanded them and said that "you have been struggling for three months for the supremacy of the Constitution, and the nation has pinned high hopes on you". Those of us who heard the speech made at the Faisalabad Bar convention must surely have spent the day with this theme.

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At times it is a difficult decision of how much television I can or should watch on Sunday mornings. And how much of that morning slot can go to the newspapers. Sunday's newspapers have their own compelling attraction. With the growing interference or rather availability of TV in our lives, I have a feeling that the newspapers are losing out?
This Sunday I channel surfed for a while and stopped at PTV to watch Sunday brunch, after the chatter of the comperes. Sometimes these comperes talk so much that they become not just boring, but disgustingly irrelevant. With TV channels growing in number the quality of the comperes, anchorpersons and news readers (for news channels) has declined, and the English pronunciation of English newspapers disappointing.
And on PTV it was a surprise and a pleasure, as always, to hear Arif Ali Khan Abbasi, a former Managing Director of the Pakistan International Airlines, and a former Chief Executive of the Pakistan Cricket Board. I always find it absorbing to hear him, and his forceful expression of views is always worth listening to. It is his confidence and his dissent that should be finding many viewers.
This was evidently a programme on Arif Abbasi as he was seen providing background information on the family photographs in his home - and viewers. also got an opportunity to glimpse his family history. We saw photographs of his ancestors, as well as those of him at Oxford and a photograph of him at the time of his marriage. TV viewers were seeing another side of Arif Abbasi in this programme, and I could sense a trace of mellowing in his personality. He was unhappy with the way in which cricket, squash and PIA have been handled in the country.
But when he spoke of the PIA and the PCB he spoke with his usual authoritarian manner, and with a familiarity of language and style that does characterise his personality. His dissent with the present PCB management is known, and reflects the controversies that surround the working style of the PCB bosses, generally speaking.
Both the electronic and the print media have been focusing on the Pakistan Cricket Board, and for instance on Aaj TV .I notice there is a programme where two experts regularly discuss the world of cricket. It makes you wonder of how much cricket can the TV channels discuss. I saw Arif Abbasi's interview right till the end, occasionally glancing at the morning's newspapers as well!!!
I switched channels, and noticed that many morning shows on the private and the PTV channels were looking at the Father's Day theme, I stopped at another PTV channel to watch Shahab Mahmood interview the KESC Chief Lieutenant General Mohammad Amjad (Retd) who was presenting details of what the KESC was doing to provide electricity to Karachi. Little comfort came from what he said, as much of the expansion and maintenance is futuristic in nature. The backlog of what the KESC should have done in the last decade or two is colossal and its impact is being suffered across the city for the last three months now.
The power crisis has been a recurring one on the news channels, not just for the loadshedding and power failures that the KESC has been responsible for but also because of the power failure caused riots that have taken place in many parts of the city.
The news on Sunday morning was that the KESC and the City District Government had agreed with the trade and business associations to switch off electricity to the industrial areas from midnight to 6am so as to ensure that the residential areas were supplied power instead. Watching TV images of power riots in Karachi's residential areas, made one contemplate how far we have come in our mismanagement of the power supply situation in the city.
This theme didn't interest me long enough as I found myself watching HUM TV which was showing an interview of the Urdu poet Amjad-ul-Islam Amjad and during which there was also an interview with the noted Indian Urdu writer Gulzar. A major theme that morning on this channel as well was Father's Day here too.
It was interesting to hear the young interviewer who stressed to viewers that she was 26 years old!! I have mentioned this because she underlined this very emphatically. Of course, women being conscious and discreet about their age will always be a factor, regardless of the times we are in.
I really wanted to see this interview for there was this twin temptation of being offered two noted writers-poets in one package. But as Faiz Ahmed Faiz would say that "Aur Bhi Gham Hain Zamaney Mein Mohabbat Key Sewa'. Much as literature and music and other explicitly non-political programmes are very compelling at times, the point is that for TV viewers there are precisely at the same time such grim news and current affairs programmes or other real life distractions and diversions to reality that make TV viewing impossible.
I am very fond of TV as a medium of communication and would love to watch more TV given the chance, I must confess here. But life has other demands, and I am also not complaining about the ruthless manner in which KESC steps in to my personal territory to play havoc with it (that is to paralyse my TV viewing). My helplessness to enforce the writ of personal freedom so as to protect my privacy is something that stares at me in the face time and again. Any way, I moved from the Hum TV and hope that one rainy day I will be able to see a repeat telecast of this interview. After all I have seen some very good TV programmes as repeat telecast. Like finding love on the rebound? Perhaps.
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Once again The Late Night Show that Begum Nawazish Ali hosts with such naughtiness from her drawing room. I watched it in more than one attempt and thank God for repeat telecasts. This time her guests were the noted English language columnist Ayaz Amir and the show biz personality the vivacious Sunita Marshal. Interesting crowd, this time!! And the Begum was in her elements, now what I find developing very smoothly and strongly is the blend of themes, political and non-political. The producers and the thinkers behind this programme are consciously focusing on the major political themes in the country, picking up current affairs stories, and weaving it shrewdly with the cultural and the seemingly flippant.
I repeat seemingly flippant, for in reality even flippancy has a seriousness tucked in beneath the hard crust or the soft layers on the top. The most comical and light-hearted programmes contain grim reality. In passing I must mention the Geo Cartoon which is hard hitting, and as a concept is both entertaining and unsparing in its sarcasm. I owe more space to this cartoon which has been going for a very long time, as indeed I need to focus on many other channels and programmes.
But once again, I must emphasise that it is both frustrating and futile to try and write about all that the TV package now offers. As a TV viewer I have all the failings of being carried away by TV programmes, which I glimpse and spend big chunks of my diminishing time - only to wonder whether I opted for the right one.
How many times, and how often do TV viewers, realise that while an entire programme watched may leave no impressions (finally), but sometime only a chance remark may trigger a train of agonising or inspiring thoughts - or a fleeting image of a ghazal rendering may evoke the most emotive of experiences, and bring alive a dormant forgotten world of memories from the encyclopaedia of the past. An encyclopaedia in many volumes.
But let me return to the Begum Nawazish Ali Late Night Show which I end up seeing in the afternoon at times! It was interesting to hear Ayaz Amir and her converse and move quickly through a broad range of subjects. The Begum began with references to President General Pervez Musharraf and called him "Pervez Bhai" many times with affection. Why are they against him, she asked.
That was one theme, but there were others they touched upon, - the Pemra amendment Ordinance back track, the cross media ownership of TV channels in Pakistan, Ayaz Amir's favourite TV channels, (Aaj TV, Geo, Ary (especially Asma Shirazi) that journalism and politics don't mix that is why he gave up politics, that he was in the artillery when he was in the army that we only talk of politics in Pakistan, even at the cocktail parties, as against India where they don't as they have solved problems which Pakistanis are still trying to cope with.
Then in this interview there was the gentle but strong presence of Sunita Marshal, who said many interesting things. For instance when introduced to Ayaz Amir she didn't seem to know of him, and even said that when she read newspapers she wasn't really bothered about the names of people who wrote.
Then she said that she was an admirer of President General Pervez Musharraf and that she was not interested in politics at all. She recalled her school days in the nineties when there were strikes in Karachi, and said that as a matter of comparison things were much better now.
There was talk of the Federal budget and she felt that while prices have risen, there was also the point that salaries had also gone up over the last few years.
There were many references to recent developments in the country, including those that focused on Imran Khan, chief of the Tehrik-e-Insaf, who has taken a bold stand on many issues - and who is the subject of many news stories and current affairs programmes. All in all, this was one of the brighter, stronger shows in this programme which retains its grip and hold quite comprehensively.
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An AFP story that focuses on the point of Palestinians taking the battle to the TV screens is relevant given our own politics that has begun unfolding on our TV screens in a widening canvass. Datelined Ramallah, West Bank, the story reads thus "Mercenaries". "Assassins" "traitors" "Zionists". Rival Palestinians are taking their battle to television screens after the Islamist movement Hamas routed its secular Fatah rivals in Gaza".
The story said that the Palestinian State TV is loyal to President Mahmud Abbas of Fatah and Al Aqsa TV a Hamas channel each has a verbal weapons cache in the war for public opinion following the Islamists take-over.
Each side says the other is a foreign agent. Hamas accuses Fatah of being agents for Israel, while Fatah blasts the Islamists of working for Iran, said this news story. It is an interesting story, for Pakistani readers in particular.
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And now only a brief acknowledgement of the part one of the Tribute to the legendary Ameen Sayani which Hum TV telecast last week. The second part is scheduled to go on air tonight (June 23) at 9pm. I hope to talk about this next time.
Also the Salman Rushdie theme, which has been a major one for some days now, after the announcement that he has been conferred knighthood by the UK government. Pakistan too has deplored the decision.