Swazi TV, Swaziland’s state-controlled television station, has been celebrating its 30th birthday.
Unsurprisingly, there has been a lot of airtime devoted to this momentous event by the channel itself and Swazi newspapers have devoted a lot of space to congratulations and partying. Channel Swazi (Swaziland’s only other television station) has been silent on the subject.
I wasn’t going to comment about this event, because as regular readers know I am not a fan of the channel and I didn’t want to be a party-pooper.
But I see that Nathi Gule, who writes a page on television every Friday in the Times of Swaziland, was none too impressed with Swazi TV either, so my resolve to be kind has weakened a little.
On his page last week (11 April 2008) Gule wondered what all the fuss was about. What was so special about Swazi TV? What was there to tell Gcinekile or Bheki next door about?
‘After 30 years of the local television station, we still do not have live local soccer,’ he wrote.
‘Just the other day the Swazi Bank Cup Final was playing and since some of us were at work, we had to rely on people’s narratives of the event.
‘For a country that has a national broadcaster that brags of being around for 28 to 30 years, that certainly is nothing to be proud of. We still have the same styled old movies on screen, save for one or two times.
‘Our line ups are still as predictable as they were a few years ago, save for three or four new shows with presenters we have been watching over the past few years. We still do not have local children’s programmes.
‘We still do not have proper entertainment programmes brewed locally save for that show with Mshikishi. Where are our empowerment shows, where is the variety?’
Gule has a point. Swazi TV (and Swaziland’s only other TV station, Channel Swazi, is the same) has very little content that is produced within the kingdom. This is not unusual for television in developing countries such as Swaziland. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that it costs money to produce television programmes (much more than for radio or for writing newspaper articles) and there isn’t much money around in Swaziland to do this.
The second is that the global economy in television is skewered in favour of rich nations. For example, popular television programmes in the United States make a profit for their makers from being shown in the US. But not content with this profit, programme makers, who are often part of enormous multinational media conglomerates with worldwide affiliates, then sell their shows internationally and charge a relatively small price. That means that countries such as Swaziland can buy programmes from overseas at a cost that is less than the cost of making their own programmes.
As well as the profit motive, TV stations know that they are buying programmes that have proved to be popular with viewers elsewhere and they hope (perhaps even assume) that they will be popular with their own audiences. Think of programmes such as the Oprah Winfrey show that is seen on TV stations all over the world, even in tiny countries such as Swaziland that could never afford to make such programmes for themselves.
So, it is the economics of programme making that is determining what we see on television in Swaziland.
There is a downside to this. Academic research on what people in developing countries watch on television suggests that programming can be harmful to the local community as it reflects language, values and lifestyles that are often vastly different from those of the community ‘consuming’ the content.
People in Swaziland are now able to see images on their TV screens that go against local cultural norms, such as violence and nudity that affect traditional values of modesty.
The lifestyles of people in popular TV programmes (such as soapies) can deceive people and create false expectations about what the viewers’ lives could be like.
In some developing countries television has tended to alter the social relationships within communities, most obviously in the way people spend their time. One example of this is how time in the evening is no longer spent story telling. This puts the continuity of the people’s history in danger if they have an oral tradition, which is passed from generation to generation through such story telling sessions.
Family lifestyle has also been altered in terms of the way people speak (all that American slang) and the times family gather. Meal times are altered so family members do not miss their favourite programmes.
In one survey of rural India researchers found that television has significantly contributed to the restructuring of social relationships in the villages.
Television brings both men and women of all ages together on a regular basis in close proximity for an extended period of time. This closeness over time has created new types of relationships among people of different ages and genders. It is not only the physical proximity of people on a daily basis but that television informs and imparts messages and images to every viewer equally. You do not have to be literate or educated to watch television.
Children and youth are often as informed and knowledgeable if not more so than adults. The need to watch television among family members initiates a breakdown in the sex-role differentiation of work toward sharing certain responsibilities so everyone may watch television. Today, women and men are occasionally seen eating together in order to finish the chores in time for their favourite TV programme.
It is important for television stations to provide programming content that is created locally because such content expresses the community’s local needs, knowledge and experience that is relevant to the community. The process of creating and disseminating local content provides opportunities for members of the community to interact with each other, expressing their own ideas, knowledge and culture in their own language.
But to create relevant content you need owners or producers with the motivation to create it. To do this in Swaziland all levels of society, including the policy-makers in government, must recognize the need to support those who create, produce and distribute the programmes.
I don’t see much evidence of this happening in Swaziland.
See also
SWAZI TV ON THE RACK
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