Point of View:'Entertaining' radio listeners with sex

by Janaka Perera

The Government's timely action in suspending the radio broadcasts of Raja FM should serve as a lesson to all those who interpret freedom of the wild ass as freedom of entertainment on radio and television.

The ban followed repeated complaints to the Mass Media and Information Ministry from intellectuals, religious leaders, media personnel and society leaders that this channel of the Colombo Communication (Pvt) Ltd. broadcast anti-social and extremely repulsive and vulgar material that could corrupt the society, specially the younger generation.

Attention was drawn in particular to this late night Sinhala program which allegedly contained sexually explicit, vulgar and indecent descriptions. A young woman conducted this program twice a week.

Having listened to a recording of one segment of this "sex education" program, to find out what this was all about, to say that it was corrupting young minds is an understatement. This has earned Raja FM the epithet Vanachara FM.

Shortly before the ban a colleague of a relative of mine rang this particular radio station and asked why they were broadcasting raw filth in the guise of sex education.

"Why do you listen? You mind your own business. If you don't like it just switch off or change the channel. There are people who want this program and we are catering to them," was the response he got from the young woman who answered the phone.

Apparently, 'entertainment' to some private radio and TV channels is a way of making profits by hook or by crook. In order to justify this they have the audacity to say that it is because people like such programs that they are aired. To these radio and TV station bosses the sole criteria of a program's quality seem to be its popularity. This is a ludicrous argument to say the least. It is like saying junk food is good for health because many people like it.

When crass commercialism envelops a society, no culture worth talking about can survive. Today, we are force-fed with trivia and trash on an unprecedented scale. It goes without saying that certain private radio and TV stations are among the worst culprits. They are experts in reducing the sublime to the ridiculous. They remind us the story of a woman who rang a television station in Wisconsin USA in July 1969 - when the entire American nation was glued to their TV sets watching the first man walk on the moon - to complain that her favourite soap opera was not being shown that day and why was that. She was totally oblivious to one of the biggest news events in the history of mankind! (MEDIA-SPEAK).

In the years before the `idiot box' and private radio channels were introduced to Sri Lanka, radio (SLBC) programs never trampled on the sensibilities of the people, as is often the case today. Some private radio channels, competing with each other, remind us of speeding private buses trying to overtake other vehicles in a frantic bid to collect passengers with no regard for road rules or public safety.

Some third-rate private radio channels are the favourites of these bus crews. Their radios in full blast have become an absolute nuisance to commuters. These channels broadcast utterly low quality songs and cheap music as well as inane phone-in programs that only serve to annoy and irritate sensible persons who are compelled to travel in buses as they are the only mode of transport most people can afford.

As for television, it has cultivated the erroneous idea that visual stimulation can be a substitute for thought. It was probably foresight that made former Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake to postpone the introduction of television to Sri Lanka in the late 1960s. Instead, he used the funds from the German Federal Republic to improve Sri Lanka's radio (SLBC) broadcasting facilities.

The sad truth is that TV could have been very successfully utilized here - as an educational medium, much more than a mode of entertainment.

The comments that renowned playwright and author, the late Professor Ediriweera Sarachchandra, made on some of our television programs 17 years ago is valid today as it was then, although we had only two TV channels at the time. Delivering the Punitham Tiruchelvam Memorial Lecture at the BMICH, Colombo on November 29, 1989 the professor said:

"Television unfortunately has functioned without responsibility in this country, paying no regard to the fact that it is operating in the context of a traditional culture... television is now used as an adjunct to the consumer society, chiefly for the purpose of advertising the goods (most of them imported, unfortunately) that the sponsors of the programs want to sell. In order to achieve this end both channels telecast stuff that appeals the lowest possible taste of the largest segment of viewers.''

Today, the worst examples of this are serialised Sinhala and Hindi teledramas based on hackneyed themes.

These "soaps" cast are almost always woven around weeping, hapless women. All kinds of villains threaten them. Leading unhappy family lives, these females are eternally at the mercy of domineering parents, brothers, in-laws, jealous lovers, rapists, adulterous husbands, drunkards, lecherous bosses or gossipmongers. Some of these programs are locally produced while others are third-rate Indian productions dubbed in either Sinhala or Tamil and broadcast mostly via private TV channels.

A couple of months ago, during a radio discussion on children's rights, a female participant recalled the case of a little boy whose parents were both employed. Whenever either of them was late returning home, this child used to taunt them, saying that they were having illicit love affairs! When a psychologist probed how a boy of his age knew about adultery, it was found that he had been watching Sinhala teledramas in which either the father or mother was having an extra-marital affair.

Many a Hindi movie telecast on local TV channels today is filled with horrifying scenes of battery, bloodshed and murder. In some of the scenes the victims are doused in petrol and burnt alive. These are in sharp contrast to the Hindi films that were popular among Sri Lankan cinema audiences in the pre-television era.

Needless to say in the West a highly commercialised mass media has had an enormous and often negative impact on social values.

On prohibiting offensive movies and other programs, Writer and Author Manel Abhayaratne says: "It is strange that those who feel that banning is to be condemned often quote situations that have occurred in the Western world. The Western world by following a "no fault instant gratification" attitude has lost much of its spiritual and moral vision."

In one international survey conducted in the West, reported in 'Awake,' a couple of years ago, respondents were asked what is morally right. The vast majority had cited personal experience and not ethical considerations.

It is high time the government set up a regulatory body - a properly constituted Broadcasting Authority - and introduced a set of ethical guidelines to control all radio and television entertainment programs. It would serve as the best means of preventing socially offensive programs being aired.