Programs for Children: Pakistani Televisions' Content in 2020

Programs for Children: Pakistani Televisions’ Content in 2020

Abstract

Television can play a significant role in nation building and children are generally viewed to be playing a vital role in building the image of a nation. Due to its significance, recent years have seen a worldwide rise in the media content that focuses children as the target audience. Several studies had investigated Pakistani televisions’ content with reference to adults, women and youth audiences. Studies related to children had mostly focused on the impact of television content on children or children's attitudes towards television content. However, the impact of educating and entertaining television on Pakistani children has received limited attention. Therefore, this paper initiated to examine the role of Pakistani television channels to educate or entertain Pakistani children, during January-December 2020. The foremost objective of this paper is to examine the proportion of children's programs in the top four Pakistani entertainment television channels. For this reason, the transmissions of top five Pakistani general entertainment television channels were taken into account included; Hum TV HD, ARY Digital, Geo Entertainment, and ARY Zindagi. The study found only a few programs for children that were fulfilling the purposes of entertaining and educating. Hence, Pakistani television channels are not fulfilling their responsibility in nation-building, as being a social agent of change, the media is responsible to play a key role in building their character and improving the ethical standards of Pakistani children.