Afsan Chowdhury, May 2, 2019
The 2018 elections saw the Awami League (AL) emerge as an overwhelmingly dominant party. Its so overwhelming that public interest in politics, particularly party politics, already on the wane for over a decade, went on an overdrive. It is starting to affect mass media too. And the mass media has not been coping well with the changes as public interest in conventional politics is sinking.
Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the major opposition party, decided to join parliament after several months of stubborn refusal. Before that, a solitary BNP MP had decided to join and expulsion proceedings were ordered against him. However, a dramatic change occurred after the party leader, Tarek Zia, in exile in London, decided to ask BNP MPs to join.
When this announcement came, the media went on a whirlwind of coverage. But in doing so, it also exposed the fact that it is comfortable with conventional news reporting but not with shifting media patterns as audience tastes widens and seeks more variety, beyond politics.
TV’s many competitors
The Bangladesh TV media faces many competitors, including Indian channels, whose entertainment shows, particularly soap serials, are immensely popular in Bangladesh. Many advertisers had even shifted their marketing campaigns to Indian channels.
Recently, the government banned Bangladeshi advertising on Indian media, but such protectionist policies can only run for so long. In the end, advertisers will find a way to effectively reach the audience that is wider.
Revenue pressure on the media is high in general. At a recent meeting with the Prime Minister, national media leaders whined a great deal about declining advertisements and income from sales. The print media is in a dire state and staff downsizing is common.
This phenomenon also affects online media outlets which never had a revenue model in place to begin with. Hiring professional staff is becoming difficult as such outlets can’t pay enough to keep them. This gap is now filled by any low paid greenhorns.
Why interest in such a sector?
The Bangladesh media has been declared as the least free in South Asia by the media watch organization Reporters Without Borders in its 2019 report though this is contested by many given the fact that the number of investors keen to enter the media market, without freedom or profit, is so high.
The PM expressed surprise at the many complaints raised about the ill health of the paid media because so many were applying and lobbying hard to get into field.
The PM said she had asked her officials to grant permission to all applicants. On the surface, this seems like good news, but in this case more will not be merrier but sorrier. A limited advertising market has been made even smaller by social media .There is a lack of professional investors and workers are just a few.
Media without news sense?
The media thinks that news means politics. But exclusive interest in political news is declining rapidly. The result is a disenchanted audience which is looking for news outside politics. The media is comfortable reporting and quoting politicians and commentators and not much else.
The case in point is a short lived “major” event that centered around the supply of safe water by the government. The chief of the utilities company WASA headed by one Taksem Khan claimed that it supplies water that is “totally drinkable.” This was protested by many. A group of angry citizens from the Dhaka suburb of Jurain area led by one Mizanaur Rahman, an elderly citizen with an activist background, went to the WASA HQ to protest. They carried a pitcher of murky water collected from a tap in the area tap to make lemonade and serve the WASA chief.
The WASA Managing Director was absent from his office but other WASA officials refused to drink the sherbet. Instead the embarrassed lot promised to address the problem to ensure safe water. When the MD called the activist a “lunatic” the public howled angrily on Facebook. A post on the issue got 11k likes. Yet the story, clearly of public interest wasn’t picked up by paid media for long.
Roots of media’s politics addiction
When on April 28, BNP MPs suddenly decided to join the Sangsad (parliament), the entire media joined the news parade. Although the joining had low impact on public welfare and more on party politics, the shift showed showed where media’s interest lay.
The MPs joining wasn’t the biggest news on social media. But the paid media’s attention ignoring many other issues shows that the mindset of news editors is out of touch with public interest.
Through this kind of news sense they are displaying an inability to satisfy consumers in changing times. Not only are they losing audiences to social media but ads as well.
Their entertainment products are second rate and not watched by Bangladeshis. So, Indian channels are inevitably going to reign. And if on top of that they follow only a limited number of stories, they expose their professional limits too.
This will mean looking for greater subsidy through official or unofficial sponsorships. But the competition for loyalty-based sponsorship is high. The pie will therefore get smaller with no net gainers.
The age of media product-based professional competitive media in Bangladesh seems to be declining. It is caught in a world where owners and editors try to be loyal visibly, a workforce not learning new tricks to suit new audience tastes, and a media market under pressure from social media.