Daily Times

Pakistan Television has served Pakistan sports in unprecedented manner. One can credit PTV with producing a whole slew of players for multiple sports through their bandbox broadcast of variety of sporting events. No one knew the ropes better than PTV when it came to popularising and glorifying sports and sportsmen. There are incalculable number of Pakistan players who would attribute their rise to the stardom to PTV’s telecast of certain games. For instance, Ghulam Abbas, who was declared Asian volleyball player of the year in 2004, said in interview that he watched SAF Games volleyball final match in 1989 between India and Pakistan on PTV which turned out to be a cliffhanger and Pakistan staged a phenomenal comeback to overpower India after going down 0-2 sets. That thrilling end to the game brought him such excitement that he decided to take to the volleyball court and ended up as ‘Pride of Pakistan.’

Any sportscast is combination of camera-production and commentary and PTV excelled in both the departments. But now we have only stories to tell as, seemingly, Pakistan Television is reduced to house of mess. This prized institution is running without a regular Managing Director for almost 2 years and Ahmed Nawaz Sukhera, Secretary Information, is assigned the additional charge of MD PTV. One wonders how could you expect some one to do two full-time jobs simultaneously? Any how, PTV Sports faces barrage of criticism from time to time for their below-par coverage. You may hear people jokingly saying “Entire world entered the 21st century except PTV Sports.” Most recently coined phrase is “PTV Sports trying to sell 88’ corolla in 2018.” A reference to their age-old equipments.

Expectations weren’t high when PTV were asked to cover World XI vs Pakistan hockey series but I never thought coverage would be that poor. First of all, if some international activity takes place in the country its gold dust as we are a sport-starved nation and are in desperate need of resumption of sporting activities. Its incumbent upon PTV, as a public institution, to televise all these events in order to send the signal to the world that Pakistan is safe enough for sports. PTV management couldn’t realize the fact that an international event got to be broadcasted internationally to send the positive message about prevalent security situation in the country. Now, PTV Sports is a scrambled channel and only available to limited audience even within Pakistan- despite being public service broadcaster. Its viewership is restricted to those who have access to cable TV network while those who reside in villages, almost 70 percent of the population, can’t have this ‘luxury’.

Still the management could have used the terrestrial network to make the broadcast available to virtually every individual in Pakistan but they didn’t and only Heaven knows why. That means they had no interest whether this telecast was reaching out to the most of Pakistani youth. An other massive faux pas spotted was that channels like PTV World and Global could have been used to project Pakistan’s positive image abroad that we have defeated the scourge of terrorism and are all-set to host international events again but ironically they were also not used. To make the matter worse, commentary was conducted only in Urdu meaning even if some international viewer wanted to watch the series through online streaming would lose interest quickly due to unintelligibility of the language.

PTV Sports organized pre and post game shows involving former overseas cricket stars, in the past, and they secured the highest viewer rating (though they could have been conducted in much better way). My question is that why such shows weren’t organized for the game of hockey when the national sport is in tatters and we desperately need to enhance hockey fan-base? Secondly, the production quality was simply nightmarish and ‘spectator-repellent’, if I can put it that way. You need certain number of cameras to cover the event scrupulously.

But the problem was that they neither have enough cameras nor have the expertise to know about camera placement as to where and at what angle cameras are installed to cover a hockey match. And then they had no idea which camera frame Pakistan Television traditionally used to televise a hockey game, which was neither too wide nor too tight. Production team was exposed showing short-corners as it seemed cameramen were struggling to find the perfect frame while producer(s) scrambling for the right combination of camera angle and frame. In Karachi game, it occurred to me, as if they haven’t installed behind-the-goal-post camera which provides the best angle for a short-corner replay. Shot composition was just woeful as the cameramen had very little idea, if at all, about what makes an eye-pleasing frame.

Thirdly the equipments PTV Sports use are largely obsolete in today’s world, particularly the cameras. Picture quality is so poor that people, in jest, offer their mobile cameras for the coverage instead. Finally would like to say few words about commentary panel which yet again failed to impress the spectators. People who expected PTV to introduce Zakir Syeds and S M Naqis of 21st century were bitterly disappointed and PTV Sports’ management isn’t alien to dressing-down on this issue. When I contacted Federal Secretary for Information and Broadcasting Ahmad Nawaz Sukhera for his stance on the issue he said lack of coverage of international hockey by PTV crew was the reason behind these anomalies. But who exactly held you guys back from covering domestic hockey on regular basis? Real solution to these discrepancies is to find horses for the courses, those who can do justice to their jobs.

Published in Daily Times, January 28^th 2018.