Importance of Television Regulatory Commission

Lt Col Chandana Weerakoon

The main objective of a Television Regulatory Commission is to regulate the telecasts and related activities to achieve the national interest before discussing the objectives and conduct of the organization where the basic principles of the media is concerned. Television is the most powerful media the world is having since it has moved down to all the nooks and corners of the world.

There are three main objectives as far as this electronic media is concerned, ie, inform, educate and entertain the public. The controversial question is, are we setting these standards to the public? If not the government should bear the responsibility for segregating the facets for the viewers in order to counter the taxes airtime and money spent for the equipment. The basic system of the management is the implementation of a Television Regulatory Commission as we have introduced the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission. It should work to achieve the goals of the nation and protect the nation or the consumer.

The responsibility of the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission is to provide maximum communication facility with minimum cost in order to achieve communication development and goals of the country, though it could not achieve the national interest but the interest of the communication providers of various means of the country. The development of a country depends on the communication development.

Functions of the commission

These types of commissions are common in all developed countries as well as in many Asian countries. As an example, one can take the US Television Regulatory Commission. They have the responsibility for coordinating 129 television media agencies which telecast programmes to the American citizen as well as the world. Though they have 129 television stations, they have regulated the programmes to suit the requirement of the nations, that is by different ways. One is, giving separate channels, business channels etc. When we take our system, we have equal types of programmes at the same time where business competition emerged sacrificing the interest of the viewer. But, the regulatory commission can divide and make the programmes to create a fairness to all the viewers who are paying taxes and spending their precious air time in front of the valuable equipment.

When it comes to advertisements of the sponsors, they have allocated time for the advertisement without hampering the entertainment of the viewer. Also the repetition of advertisement is banned, though it is common in our TV channels, especially the private TV channels. I can recall one such incident. When a teledrama is introduced by Rupavahini and ITN, there were only two sponsoring advertisements before the programme and after the programme. Then later they introduced another advertisement in the middle, subsequently they started two advertisements in between the programme. Therefore the viewers have the total rights to control this kind of unnecessary harassment or interference.

To understand this, we can visualize a good example from Italy. They allocated only six minutes for advertisements for a 24 hour channel. When it comes to our system we can increase the advertising time even up to 10 minutes.

Television can be used as a remarkable tool for the development of the nation. Though we are mostly using this for propaganda purposes. The country can utilize this tool to cater to the development of the nation. The identification of the requirement is essential to programme the requirement. Recently, we launched educational programmes like the Discovery programme and the news channels to the television system through satellites and IPTV system.

The quality of a programme can be increased using common computer programme like MS Power Point but we never witness that during discussions. The charts of pictures are shown by the video camera itself. It is only a few minutes effort by the technicians in the programme formulation.

We can find the example situations from Discovery, CNN and other developed networks. Therefore, automation of system can achieve a good programme formulation to cater to the educated viewers interest.

One can find neglected areas owing to negligible time duration. Specially, Science, Agriculture, Culture should be given prominence as a developing country. Being an agricultural based economic system, the country has to give more prominence to the airtime of agricultural development and techniques.

Airtime for entertainment had taken prominence in the programme formulation that is 50 percent. I hope though the entertainment is required for humans, this is not the hour to allocate this much of prominence to the subject area. We should be able to count this time for agriculture, social development, education, science, management to achieve the development of the country.

Other areas

Another existing annoyance is that a prominent person who is said to be skilled in Arts or Media is brought always on camera. I am of the opinion that the viewers are fed up of this type of segments. Viewers need to gather all-round knowledge through discussions/programmes on security studies, military, environment, conflict resolution, science, engineering, education, agriculture, international politics, personal development (not only the beauty culture) law, social sciences and English, Tamil, Sinhala languages to name a few.

The largest Rupavahini telecasting agency does not have a science programme section, though we have world famous scientists in the country. If not for the discovery programme, the whole country will be blind as far as science knowledge is concerned.

Other critical area is the scrutiny of the advertisement. The viewers can find ample advertisements which provide wrong information on health and the interest of the consumers. There is a huge requirement of protecting the nation by the multinational companies and other local producers introducing unwanted items, and services to the country.

There is a requirement to allocate prominence to the indigenous products and the services.

Recruiting for electronic media

This is very important and controversial area, because the media is presently dominated by few families and their descendents. We need to recognize the recruiting system in order to achieve the maximum efficiency and the contribution for the nation. Professional presenters and other staff are the other areas of interest because most of the presenters or commentators are unprofessional for the subject. We can witness that same presenter is appearing in all fields of programmes without basic knowledge of the subject.

Also at the strategic level, the decision-makers should understand the requirement of all round knowledge from the spectators. That will only be achieved by giving academic knowledge on the subject.

The implementation of the Television Regulatory Commission is an urgent and important requirement.

The people must understand the procedures to be done by the said commission and the implementation of the same. The governing body should think of working for the optimum interest of the nation in spite of achieving of self centric goals.