A gift worth giving to our kids

On this National Children’s Day, the news is welcome that the govt will promote quality TV programmes. One very good piece of news on this National Children’s Day, which we are celebrating today, is that the government is planning ways to finance the production of quality programming for children’s television. The lack of suitable shows for young people, particularly during the early evening hours on weekdays and all throughout weekends, has been a topic of public discussion for as long as anyone can remember, but nothing has ever come of it.

PM’s Office Minister Suranand Vejjajiva said the government was considering setting up a fund to provide grants or subsidies to encourage television producers of documentaries or other types of wholesome entertainment for our youth. The government also plans to ask state enterprises to chip in with financial support for quality programming, which is costly to produce and difficult to find sponsors for.

Efforts to improve television content for children would be a most precious gift to the country’s youth, even though the government is also trying to encourage children to read more for pleasure and self-improvement in addition to reading their school texts.

Whereas reading does offer greater benefits to young minds, the high prices of books are a barrier, but television content is free, and virtually every household has at least one television set.

So, as an investment, efforts to improve programming quality may benefit a greater number of youngsters. It also takes time to instil a love of reading in children, but airing high-quality youth-oriented programmes would offer instant results.

Because the government has neglected to monitor programming quality for so long, unfettered market forces have caused it to sink to alarmingly low levels. In the absence of alternative sources of cheap entertainment, children and adults alike must make do with free television, dominated as it is by tacky soap operas, silly game shows, repetitive music videos and “news” programmes presented by servile journalists toeing the official line.

It didn’t use to be this bad, because in the old days the standard by which virtually all television programmes were judged was their appropriateness for family viewing. Back then, Thai soap operas were based on soppy rags-to-riches tales, unrequited love, burning jealousy, ungrateful children and domineering parents – pretty harmless stuff guaranteed to capture the widest audience and a formula for success that producers stuck with for a long time.

Generation after generation of children grew up watching this with their parents, who would provide a running commentary on what was happening on screen. Parental guidance was the norm, and children learned about, among other things, virtue and evil, which behaviours were appropriate to emulate and which to reject.

But times have changed, and now new variations on the same themes are being produced with liberal helpings of sex, violence and profanity added to the mix. Worse, many children are now watching television without any adult supervision whatsoever.

A correlation between exposure to screen violence and real-life violence among the young has been well documented by countless studies. And the same is true for the influence of television on the sexual behaviour of the young and their use of offensive language.

Such concerns are real and merit serious discussion among all who genuinely care about children’s welfare.

The lack of well-produced programming that appeals to children and teenagers has driven them away from the television screen and to computer gaming, which offers only limited benefits to young minds, since playing most computer games is a solitary pursuit that does not help them develop emotionally or socially.

It cannot be emphasised strongly enough that television establishes the baseline standard for the entire entertainment industry. Most homes now have a set, and the average household watches it for hours every day. The ubiquity of television has had the profoundest effect on our culture.

There is no better way to invest in the cultivation of young minds than through this most popular of all media. Improving the content quality of television, if done right, could be a gift to our children that keeps on giving.

January 14, 2006

http://nationmultimedia.com/2006/01/14/opinion/index.php?news=opinion_19656785.html

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