Tuesday, May 22, 2007

More educational programmes needed

There seems to a lack of educational programmes on Sri Lankan television channels. Many channels view educational programmes as an unnecessary expense. The money spinner for television stations are cricket and entertainment programmes specially Hindi movies. Several years ago Rupavahini showed Discovery Channel programming but this was stopped after a few years. These programmes gave children much needed exposure to the latest trends in Science, Technology and other areas. A few years back ITN started showing National Geographic Channel programming but it is worth mentioning that there are better and higher quality programming on Nat Geo than what is selected by ITN for telecast.

The private channels seem to be avoiding the educational genre and strictly stick to entertainment and cricket. ETV commenced a programme called "Prehistoric Park" which is now drawing to a conclusion and we hope that they will at least continue to show other educational programmes too.

It is true than there are many educational channels on pay television but not many can afford pay television as yet. So we request television channels to give some special attention to the genre of educational programming and we hope that the national television station Rupavahini sets an example in this aspect.

We hope that selected high quality programming from channels such as Discovery, Animal Planet, Nat Geo, History Channel will be telecast in Sri Lanka over FTA. The challenge for all the television stations is who will claim the position of the 1st channel (Educational 1st) to successfully telecast these programmes.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sri Lankan TV Educational Programing =

Horror Stories
War Movies
A Few boring programs from Nat Geo

What happened to Discovery on Rupavahini?

Anonymous said...

They could do educational progs on how to play cricket ! ha ha - Public service broadcasting dosn't work here cause the public don't deserve the service as decreed by those unwilling to pay the going rate for this expensive to acquire programming. Instead they simply recycle the same shows again and again.