PTV turns 50 on November 26. Not many people know this or even care. Or perhaps some of them do; at least those who grew up with PTV as the sole channel should remember it more fondly than others.
Of course, the state-controlled channel was not the most authentic or best source of information, but in the case of PTV somehow the viewers knew what to add or substract from what was sold to them as ‘news’. And then there were the newspapers the next morning to fall back on -- for truth, facts, analysis, and everything else the khabarnama from last night had missed out on.
Yet, the PTV days are a part of the collective memory that no other so-called independent or specialised channels of today can match in any way.
PTV was a formal medium where decency and culture were the norms, even when the content was not too highbrow. It encouraged a civilised discourse; you could not imagine people shouting at each other in a talk show. As the much talented Aslam Azhar tells us in an interview, even a dictator like Ziaul Haq could not take away from the value system the PTV cadre had internalised over the years. As I.A.Rehman writes it was because of the staff that was of outstanding calibre and was broad-minded.
The viewer, today, has so much to choose from and yet so little. The PTV viewer, on the other, hand was treated to an eclectic mix that meant sheer quality -- of talk shows, music, sports, quiz programmes, drama, documentaries, and what not. The brilliant and talented minds who ran these shows made sure the viewers’ tastes were constantly raised.
That is the greatest achievement of PTV. These are the lessons that must be learnt and not ignored by the channels that have come to almost replace it, especially in the urban centres.