Or my own show at least.
My television experience has been painful mostly. I hated the people I had to work with, I despised the tomfoolery that producers indulged in and the whole media culture that spawns big-headed jerks we like to call ‘celebrities’.
My first television program was when there was only PTV around. I was about 13 maybe. And a friend of my father thought I talked a lot.
A lot. And even though the man was nothing short of a genius himself, I really didn’t think it took brains to figure that out.
And he thought he should put it to use. He put me in a kids magazine show with lots of puzzles and tweeny songs PTV fondly thought kids loved. I did a couple of more shows after that, co-hosting and playing the part of the little cute girl in the frock with short hair and big eyes (in all fairness, I wasn’t cute, just a kid in a frock PTV fondly thought was the mass image for little girls). And I kept getting to do silly kids programs – and then I went on a break. Because I was 16 and in my day, 16 was not the age for television and vice versa.
Television barely had anything for teenagers mainly because television was only PTV, NTM and ZeeTV if you had a dish antennae. Or SPTV with those goofy spider-style antennae that seemed to be made out of leftover utensil steel.
So once I grew out of that I began getting offers to do dull plays (that Dad wouldn’t let me do) and slightly moronic singing shows with kids (remember Hadiqa Kiyani and Sohail Rana?) and a music teacher. That show ran for a year or so and I still meet people telling me they remember me from that time. My face hasn’t really timewarped into adulthood and I quickly change the subject. I’ve even had my kindergarte/montessori teachers spot me and tell me, ‘You went to Casa Dei Bambini didn’t you?’
Post cable television, post-Geo and post all that is now all and sundry in the name of media, I reclused. People who were assistant producers in Pakistan Television (and being an assistant producer in PTV meant picking up leftover scripts after the recording is done and making sure the noisy nosy kids get food during breaks) began directing their own shows. The market was suddenly huge and PTV’s way of doing things suddenly became obsolete.
There was no way you could spend two days of rehearsing the script or arriving at the studio at 8 in the morning – even before the lighting guys got there – with all the competition and 24-hour-transmission cycle. Cable channels were on the air, all the time, all the while. They had to keep it snappy, they had to create stuff all the time and if they slacked on quality some time or the other it was okay because the guy sitting on top was too busy taking calls from advertisers and the ones overseeing the recordings/transmissions were rejects from PTV or NTM.
There was no way you could speak stuff without telling your producer first. Censorship was a big deal and so was clothing. There were people who would tell you your face is meshing into the background or your words were slurring and fumbling and if you had an accent like Saima Mohsin, you weren’t allowed to speak Urdu. If you had an attitude, you could shove it up your ass because PTV was the king.
Good or bad, cable dethroned PTV like Louis the Fourteenth and fed everything else – including the standard, the method, the environment – to the guillotine. Cable changed television forever and from one khabarnama at nine we went to news on the hour. From one stellar-star-cast drama a week that ended after 23 episodes, we went to multi-starrer, multi-month-running plays that didn’t rely on studio sets and old furniture. They were shot in beautiful countries with beautiful girls and 00900-786-01 kept flashing at the bottom.
PTV lay old and forgotten, like a half-dead retired court jester alive only because the King had to have an official jester.
Where the King really got his laughs from was the free-lance pranksters who did it funnier, kinkier and faster.
While this meant great business opportunities for stakeholders, job opportunities for fresh graduates of media studies and a significant change of taste and sensibilities for the public – the bombardment of channels provided an erratic graph of quality and quantity. Shitty programs went on air with girls who twisted their lips and hips and said stuff in those video magazine shows that made me want to shoot myself.
Television made celebrities out of idiots like Aamir Liaquat Hussain (who is a total retard and a moron and anyone who has the patience to listen to him and call on his show is three times less the brain he does) and celebrated evangelism for truth. It dealt carelessly with aspects such as responsibility in journalism and made a mockery out of creativity and a million out of PT Barnum’s quote.
And suckers kept lapping it up.
Yesterday I saw “Rahat” cooking pineapple pancakes. And people called on her show to tell her that she had ’saved’ them from eating out of the house and thus they were saving money and they just couldn’t thank her enough.
Every caller started from,
“Haye, aap humain itni achi lagti hain na!”
(Oh, we think you are so great!)
And even though I tried the pancakes myself despite her idiotic recipe-giving out method (“a little butter, a little flour” – what the fuck is little? You’re giving out a recipe, not taking part in an old ladies’ discussion!) I did that after double checking from an online source. That woman was far too annoying to be taken without doubt.

Do NOT take Rahat's recipe for it.
I can’t understand callers like that. When Amir Liaquat Hussain was wearing a maroon embroidered organza thingamajig that flowed down to his shoulders, people called into his show and said,
“Aamir Bhai, aap bohat hi khoobsoorat lagg rahay hain!”
Brother Aamir, you look ‘beautiful’.
Which clinches it.
I should have my own tv channel. I’ll call it MinervaTV and I won’t take any advertisers to bust my chops and tell me I need to show their stupid ads to pay for my airtime.
As for how I’ll find the money to invest this, well. What if some millionaire (who hasn’t gone bankrupt yet) happens to read this blog and thinks I might have something here?
I’ll show stuff to prove that people are stupid and will keep getting more and more stupid if they kept watching these things and liking them.
To prove that television isn’t about merit or truth or objectivity. I guess it never was.
It’s more about who can get where and talent doesn’t always have to be a major portion of the deal.
I’ll make cooking shows the way they’re SUPPOSED to be shown. Not with squeaky clean kitchens where everything is neatly chopped and put in bowls. I’ll plant the cook smack in the middle of the sabzi mandi (veggie market) where tiny kids will follow him/her around for petty labor or bheek (charity) and I’ll kindly ask the host/presenter NOT to meticulously clean the cooking workspace between breaks and let it be messy, crazy and smelly.
The way a kitchen IS when you decide to cook pineapple pancakes and a chocolate milkshake and a main course apart from that.
I’ll forbid talk show hosts from repeating questions and I won’t care how big the politician is (maybe I should ask a mafia head to invest in my idea – that way the politicians would always behave on the shows), if he decides to justify his leader by saying, “That’s just the way it is” he’s not getting to speak again.
And video jockeys should have at least SOME semblance of sanity before being video jockeys. That means they don’t get to use ‘you know’ more than once in one hour, they don’t get to giggle irritatingly between sentences and it is mandatory for them to give a quiz on Pop/Rock and Metal History every week.
And I’m going to ban Meera from coming anywhere near my studio. I don’t care who she sleeps with or decides to marry or produce children with.
I’d kick ass.
That’s why I’m in Yemen with no possibility of opening a channel and that’s why Miss Meera Jee Online is getting to interview Tapu Javeri.
























