Last week, or the week before, or the week before the week before that, the local entertainment industry was a bit shaken when a talk show about celebrities was taken off from a local TV station when one of the artists unwittingly made comments that were said to insult Sayyidina Khadijah, Prophet Muhammad’s first wife. The show went under heavy fire, particularly from Muslim groups who viewed the incident as blasphemous. I’m not sure whether the editor apologized or not, but the actress did, which may or may not cool the situation down.
Me? Well, basically I do felt incensed over the whole issue, since the actress herself was a Muslim, and should knew better than to release such remarks. But that is not exactly the issue I’m trying to bring up now.
Now, what really pissed me off was the TV programme itself. It’s another show about entertainment, damnit! Come now, do we seriously need another one of those? We’ve already have lots of equivalent shitty TV shows around, do we still have room for more? One only needs to look at the past local shows we’ve already got: entertainment programs (AF, AF2, AF3, AF4, and the new AF5, Malaysian Idol, Gang Starz, Who will Win), gossip shows and detestable local dramas with wrong messages (read: Dunia Baru!).
Come now. Hadn’t our society been spoon-fed with enough useless crap already? Hadn’t our society been preoccupied with enough entertainment already? Hadn’t the producers made enough money to last seven generations already? Isn’t it time to think about having more quality, education-centered TV shows already? It’s so sad that that producers nowadays are only concerned about making money, and not about the betterment of the attitude of their audiences.
Back when I was still a cute, happy, primary schooler, I used to watch National Geographic on TV3 at 9 pm every Wednesday. I so freakingly loved the programme, so much that at 9 every Wednesday, I would cease operating whatever I was doing at that time and go watch the show start, its trademark opening theme song blaring in my ears, and I would be glued in front of the CRT TV set for an entire hour, oblivious to anything happening in this world except obviously a blackout. Now, the show’s gone, and even though I can still access NG through Astro Satellite TV (who ironically also brought forward AF and what other crap I’d rather not put here), I do and still miss the TV3 one, with its Malay subtitles and all….
What I am talking about is that, why can’t we have more quality TV programmes? Last I checked, there are not many local documentaries that are shown in TV stations…well, popular ones, that is. TV1 and TV2, which are government-owned, have quite a number of local knowledge-based shows, but these often escaped most people’s notice(mine included) since most people only watch TV3 and NTV7, and perhaps TV8 and TV9 also. I’m not saying that the swasta TV stations don’t have any good shows (TV3 got Majalah 3 and MedikTV, and NTV7 got Edisi Siasat, to name a few….). It’s just that, since they know that many people tune in to their channels, the producers ought to put in some quality documentaries that teach the audiences about new stuff, be it local or foreign. I’d say that shows from NG (Built for the Kill, Wild Planet, other NG specials) or Discovery (Power Zone, the popular Mythbusters, Extreme Engineering, to name a few…) would be suitable for the task, or at least put in entertainment shows that are heavily themed on engineering which can garner interest among its audiences (Robot Wars, Monster Garage, Junkyard Wars). Sure, being an engineer wannabe, I tend to be biased towards shows with lots of engineering and technical themes, but I’d welcome any decent documentaries that can educate its viewers.
I seriously hope that things will change for the better. Since its creation, TV had shaped the mentality of many generations of people. It is the perfect tool for propaganda and brainwash; kids who grew up watching lots of television either end up as better humans of downright psychos, depending on what they watched. Knowing this, we must be the one in control of the TV, not the other way around. And I’d say, if you’re going to brainwash the masses, put in stuff that can at least make them think more and dawdle less.
Zalutations!
