World TV Day: When Bhutto realized the delicacy of TV recording

The United Nations decided to celebrate November 21 as ‘World Television Day’ on November 21, 1996, in connection with the first World Television Forum.

Pakistan was ranked 92nd among the countries in the world in the list of TV broadcasts started, while Pakistan was ranked 20th among the Muslim countries.

Government television in Pakistan started on November 26, 1964 with Lahore TV station.

In October 1964, on an experimental basis, it was decided to open a station in two cities of Pakistan, Lahore and Dhaka, with the cooperation of a Japanese firm, and television stations were opened in Lahore on November 26, 1964 and in Dhaka on December 25, 1964, from where three hours a day were broadcast. was broadcasted.

Sarwar Munir Rao has been the channel head of Pakistan Television PTV, in a conversation with Independent Urdu he said that ‘Television that started in tents, canopies and open lawns has become an empire today.’

He said that ‘in the initial period of PTV, its only purpose was to connect the provinces. In the present era there has been a proliferation of TV channels in regional and national languages ​​and it all started after 2003 when newspapers were given TV channel licenses by General Musharraf’s government.

According to Sarwar Munir Rao, ‘1930s is the decade of beginning of television broadcasting in the world. The 1940s saw the rise of television and the third decade of television maturity is the decade after the 1960s.

He said, ‘People who are working in PTV today would have no idea how television was started with very basic equipment. Pakistan Television, though a state-owned television, is the most independent. Pakistan’s private channels do open programs, such open criticism will not be seen anywhere in the world.’

While reminiscing about the past, he said that the condition of the equipment we were using at that time was that once Bhutto was giving a speech in Pishin, we told him that the sound film we have is ten It will not take more than a minute.

‘Ten minutes to 20 seconds before we give you a signal, you have to finish your conversation in ten seconds so that we can change the sound film and the camera film.

So when Bhutto was giving a speech, he was having a very serious discussion on the leadership system, the political system, his party’s manifesto and the future of Pakistan. I said, yes, these things are happening, but I will also tell you something about my childhood, how I decided to enter politics.

‘They came to the lighter conversation, the cameraman took off the spool, put the film from one spool to the other, the new film was also lying in the same bag, he picked up the spool and locked it, unzipped it and put it on the camera again and we pointed to Mr. Bhutto, he said, “Yes, you have heard all this, but the future of real Pakistan lies in these things” and he returned to the serious discussion.

Mentioning one of the mistakes made during his professional life, he said that ‘once after interviewing General Musharraf in his plane, when I was going to give closing remarks, I mistakenly said ‘This is General Musharraf’. Instead of saying ‘General Ziaul Haq’, General Musharraf laughed and patted my shoulders and said, “No problem Rao sir, Ziaul Haq has been saying this for ten years, the habit will go away easily.”

Sarwar Munir with Pervez Musharraf (Sarwar Munir)

According to Rao Sahib, nowadays there are thousands of channels around the world and in Pakistan there are also twenty TV channels whose broadcasting continues 24 hours, but after the arrival of mobile phones, what is to be seen in the coming times is that the way TV has changed the world. Had changed whether now television will be able to succeed in the battle for its survival or not.