NEPAL TELEVISION: Surrender to the Satellite Challenge

It is not even a state secret; Nepal has the worst television in all South Asia. Nepal Television (NTV), the state-owned broadcasting monopoly doles out such stale fare that, other than a couple of humour shows, its two most popular programmes are Pakistani serials on Tuesday evenings and Hindi films on Saturday afternoons.

If it is true that the only way to counter the satellite invasion is by producing as good if not better programmes than are beamed down, then NTV can provide the best advice on how to avoid that responsibility. For NTVs news is without spine, its tele-dramas hark back to the early days of melodramatic theatre, and a feudal mentality keeps good producers alienated and off the air.

The result is that the Nepali audience has abandoned Nepal Television as hopeless. The odd minister probably still watches to see himself garlanding some statue or other, but the public is elsewhere, tuning into Doordarshan, or Zee, or even PTV. Five years after the satellite invasion, every middle class Kathmandu household is hooked to one or more of the numerous satellite channels.

NTV, which once enjoyed near-total monopoly, has been relegated to the status of a minor player in its own country. Despite a decade in existence, the stations revenue is stagnant at NPR 4 crores per annum, and it is on for less than 7 hours a day. As long as NTVs programming remains so embarrassingly bad, it does not make sense even to debate such hefty societal issues as electronic cultural invasion (from India, Pakistan or the West).

While the travails of NTV are not much different than those of other state-owned broadcasters in the region, what is unique is the Nepali stations inability to respond. While others, notably Indias Doordarshan, first fumbled but then found their feet, NTV remains entangled in red-tape.

Of course, it need not be this way. The Nepali market is now large and active enough to attract a fairly strong commercial base. Besides, if it were to go on satellite, NTV could tap into the larger audience footprint that is available across Darjeeling, Sikkim, southern Bhutan (where dish antennas are for the moment banned) and a large Nepali diaspora all over India.

The national broadcaster has been agonizingly slow to respond to the threat from the skies. Programmes which can lure viewers are too few and far between, and popular entertainers have given up in disgust even as NTV hires slapstick entertainers whose hallmark is mediocrity.

NTV has not given up on its amateurish airing of "educational programmes", which include sleepy development documentaries and current affairs programmes run by unappealing anchors. NTV says it is obliged to do development broadcasts to meet its 'social obligations', but it is these programmes that some think are anti-social for their inability to respect the viewer.

NTVs Chairman Kishore Nepal, who comes from the print media, concedes that his station has not been able to compete with the satellite broadcasters. 'If nothing is done now, we could lose more viewers,' he says.

If NTV cannot ensure quality programming, then the only way is to involve the private sector. Says Abhaya Shrestha, Operations Vice President of Shangri-La Channel, a private satellite signal distributor, 'NTV should focus on being a national broadcaster, and leave programme production to the private sector.'

Indeed, purely in terms of its reach, NTV is well on its way to becoming a national broadcaster. With one broadcasting studio and seven repeater stations, it covers the eastern and central regions where 43 percent of Nepals 21 million population lives. Work is underway to bring in the west of the country under NTVs network as well.

As NTV gropes about, one private party is already preparing to go on satellite. Space Time Network (STN), Nepals biggest cable operator, already has an uplinking license from the government and has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Panamsat-4 satellite (in geostationary orbit over the Indian Ocean) and Rimsat to lease a transponder to beam its own Nepali language programmes.

Jamim Shah, chairman and managing director of STN, says his company already has enough Nepali programmes on tape for four months and it is just a matter of time before he uplinks with the satellite. 'The Nepali market is large enough to sustain good local language programming,' says Shah. Somebody should let Nepal Television in on that secret.