|
Satellite TV puts our rich culture, tradition to dangerous test
Survey reveals changing behavioral pattern of city
dwellers |
|
|
| "The survey reveals that 55.1 per cent of city dwellers
have had a little interactions with family members now what they do have earlier. Now 52.1
per cent respondents have little time on interest to pay social visit, take part in
traditional gossip, different ceremonies or family functions." |
The advent of
satellite television in Bangladesh, which is changing the behavioural pattern of city
dwellers, threatens the age old values, enriched culture and tradition of the country, a
survey revealed here recently, reports BSS.
The survey showed the changes occurred particularly in daily television watching
behaviour, day-to-day lifestyle, dress-up, fashion, career plan, use of slang term, in
showing respect to the seniors, trend to show off heroism and violence.
Youths, particularly teenagers who are exposed to the international satellite channels
with a huge number of violence through household cable connections, are posing serious
threats to our culture and tradition, the survey cautioned.
The research survey was jointly conducted by three faculty members Tahmina Akhter,
Mohammad Sahid Ullah and Ali Asgar Chowdhury of Journalism Department, Chittagong
University under the supervision of Prof M Golam Rahman of the Department of Mass
Communication and Journalism of Dhaka University.
The data were collected from a total of 443 houses in six divisional cities Dhaka,
Chittagong, Rajshahi, Khulna, Barisal, and Sylhet.
A research team of the Forum of Development Journalism and Communication Studies (FOCUS)
gathered the data from as many as 22 categories of people covering maid servants, day
labourers, housewives, students of colleges and universities, government and private
officials and employees, lawyers, physicians, engineers and journalists.
The respondents were selected in between the ages of 18 and 65 where 69.8 per cent were
male and 30.2 per cent female. The monthly income of the respondents were Taka 4001-5000
(14.2 per cent), Taka 5,001-10,000 (21.9 per cent) and Taka 10,001-15,000 (12 per cent).
The respondents also included lower and middle income groups of people.
The in-depth first ever-countrywide survey showed that the socio-political and cultural
impacts were largely ignored when the government decided to give permission to receive
signals directly for telecast in its territory in 1992.
No prior study was conducted before giving the permission and no significant study was
carried out since the inception of cable TV network.
When satellite television made its journey in Bangladesh nearly a decade ago, nobody could
really foresee that it would have a tremendous impact on our everyday life, the report
revealed.
Presently speaking style of a whole generation of young Bangladeshis is being shaped up by
the programmes aired by nearly fifty channels of different cable network.
The respondents believe that 41 per cent of the youths are interested to speak in Hindi at
the advent of 'cultural aggression' on the people of Bangladesh.
It said the audiences are spending 2-3 hours more in watching satellite television
programmes and gradually losing interest in social visits or even the interactions among
family members.
The survey reveals that 55.1 per cent of city dwellers have had a little interactions with
family members now what they do have earlier. Now 52.1 per cent respondents have little
time on interest to pay social visit, take part in traditional gossip, different
ceremonies or family functions.
The research formulated and put forward a set of recommendations to overcome these
problems and also ways to get benefits from satellite television. These include
formulation of a comprehensive satellite broadcasting policy, building up a balanced
broadcasting infrastructure and framing of an appropriate broadcasting strategy to ensure
the projection of local heritage.
|
|
|
|
 |
