Eighty years of broadcasting in Sri Lanka: some reminiscences

EIGHTY years have gone by since the introduction of broadcasting in Sri Lanka. This columnist was serving the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation as a script writer and a senior programme producer attached to the then Radio Ceylon and later as the producer of BBC's Sinhala programme Sandeshaya of the World Service.

Since returning to Sri Lanka he served for a time once again as a programme producer and joined the Mass Communication Department of the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. He is a free lance broadcaster and a member of the advisory board.

A friend of mine, a programme organiser reminded me the other day that the broadcasting services in the country had completed eighty years and that they need a voice cut from me to compile a retrospective programme. I had some notes collected over the years pertaining to the subject, which I thought would be useful at this juncture.

Going through one document (Twenty seven years of broadcasting in Ceylon, which appeared in Sri Lanka volume one no.36, dated October 15, 1952) the very initial idea of broadcasting had entered the media scene as a result of the experimentations on the part of the Ceylon Amateur Radio Society formed in 1922.

This has given way to further experiments linking the then Telegraph Department transmitting messages.

Coincidentally enough this was the period when the European broadcasting systems too were experimenting on the transmission of messages which culminated in the formation of radio stations all over the world with the best model being the BBC which transmitted forty four language programmes from the world service at Bush House in London where I happened to work.

Most of our veteran broadcasters were given an initial training there, and up to date even the programme formats are based on BBC models, like the news cast live broadcasts, interviews, magazine miscellany programmes, women's and children's programmes, religious broadcasts, educational programmes, radio play house, short story, radio features, musical programmes like the radio opera (gita nataka) and light songs and a number of other programmes.

It is recorded that the first official broadcast in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) happened to be on July 27, 1924(I refer to the report of the special committee on broadcasting in Ceylon 1941 - sessional paper xvii of 1941).

The talk of the governor who chaired this session had been broadcast.

From here onwards the listener in Sri Lanka had the chance of listening to what is happening in other parts of the world within a limited time frame initially three days a week with the universal time signals and weather reports together with the music played from gramophone records available during the period.

If I remember correct quite a lot of information on these formative stages in broadcasting has been included in the report of the commission on Broadscasting and Information, May 1966.

Some of the most interesting facts come from the formation of a 'radio club' in the country, which eventually formalized the systematic broadcasting patterns in the country, which we now denote as sound broadcasting. A number of Sinhala books have been written on the subject of the development of broadcasting in Sri Lanka.

One interesting book is written by the late veteran broadcaster cum administrator D. M. Colombage, a pioneer broadcaster who is recorded as the very first announcer who came out with the Sinhala words 'colombin kathakarami (I am speaking from Colombo)

Then came the other veteran broadcaster, Thevis Guruge, who was an all rounder, commencing from the announcer stage to the Director General cum Chairman handling all roles. Up till his sad demise he was instrumental in building up the very first television service in the country.

As a broadcaster he had the constant habit of scouting new talent for his medium. In the process he managed to introduce quite a number of new voices.

This was one factor as he told others, learnt from the training he got from the BBC. He was the founder planner of such programmes as the radio opera, twenty questions, (visipana) humourous programmes like 'vihilu tahalu'.

With the passage of time with new innovations like the serialisations from world classics came to be as a welcome variant to the radio drama that existed at the time. Writers of the calibre of Oscar Wilde, Moliere, Chekov, Ibsen and Sheridan were introduced together with the local writers like Lucien de Zoyza (chandala woman).

Leonard Woolf's The Village in the Jungle, first came to be adapted as a series of half hour radio theatre by the late veteran translator A. P. Gunaratne with the same name Beddegama which he later used for the book which too became the basis for a film by Lester James Peries.

Gunaratne was one of the indefatigable radio playwrights, who introduced via the sound medium such books of R. L Spittel's Vanishing Trails (makigiya dadaman), where the white sambour roams, (sudugonavala) Savage Sanctuary (vanasarana).

All these were later translated properly into books enabling the Sinhala reader to peep into the wildlife of our own country.

The very first original radio theatre serialisation was kurulubadda written by a poet and a school teacher P. K. D. Seneviratne. The fame of kurulubadda gave way to many more serialisations of varying nature with subject matter drawn from history, folklore and day-to-day life in the village.

One such example is Mudalinayaka Somaratne's Muvan Palassa, which was a record by itself setting an example of a serial which gave birth to many Sinhala films and teleplays.

The broadcasting system from its formative stages attracted the attention of such scholars as Professor Edirivira Sarachchandra, who introduced the shastriya sangrahaya or the classical transmission, where the serious broadcasts were included like talks and discussions.

Professor Gunapala Malalasekara and Dr. E. W. Adikaram were two of the presenters of serious topical programmes both controversial and resourceful. Then comes Professor Nandadasa Kodagoda who introduced the medical aspects in the simplest form possible and wherever necessity arose he became a member of other discussion panels.

The musical output was watched in the initial stages by the well known musician Edwin Samaradivakara and later taken over by another maestro Dunstan de Silva.

He paid more attention to the refined kind of music as against the borrowing of Hindi oriented music output which was popular due to the popularity of the Hindi films of the day.

The administrator M. J. Perera was one of the live wires in the moulding of good broadcasting in the country, for he planned the programme output by making various programme divisions or units handing over the responsibility to an organiser under whom a number of programme producers were entrusted with creative work.

This system still prevails, though I feel that the method is not fully planned though eighty years have gone by. From time to time, administrators come and go whose predominant duty perhaps is to see more on the financial aspects than the quality of the programme output. This may be a challenge from the private sector as well.

Anyway, times have still not marred the good old spirit of 'Radio Ceylon' though it is a state corporation.