History of Media & Censorship in Pakistan

The Pakistani media has gained power and freedom also according to the Pakistan Mass Media Regulatory Authority, The number of private TV channels has expanded from only 3 government channels in 2000 to 89 channels in 2012. During the Pervez Musharraf era, a considerable amount of Pakistan's private media flourished. Pakistan's media ecosystem is Vibrant and is completely autonomous. The Television industry witnessed a Media Boom after liberalization in 2002. During all those shifts, Pakistan has kept its position not only as a record source for news and analysis but also as a medium of choice for advertisers to pursue high-impact and exposure solutions. Pakistan's 70-year turbulent past has brought considerable change to its advertising sector reflecting changing global market preferences as well as local developments. In reality, Pakistan's evolving advertisement environment is a testimony and archive of changing thought and practise and of broader socioeconomic trends, as a developing economy that is at the intersection of Southern and Central Asia and the Middle East. Apart from trying to shift customers, the advertisement landscape in Pakistan has also been transformed by digital media. In addition to the massive growth of private television stations throughout the last three decades and a more rapid explosion in the digital advertisement, Pakistan has seen radio stations and foreign advertising growth from 1947 to date. In reality, Pakistani consumers are now irrevocably linked to the wider world with growing Internet penetration, particularly on mobile devices.

“In this landscape of media, the nature of it is competitive, the serious quality of journalism was replaced by sensational content. Despite that, the radio industry has not developed that much as compare to other mediums of media, but radio will be always considered as the reliable source of information in the rural areas specifically The landscape of Pakistani media represents linguistic, multi-ethnic, and class society. The Urdu and English media specifically split. Masses, especially in rural communities, read the Urdu mainstream press, in particular the newspaper. English media are urban, elite and more liberal than the Urdu media. The English media are more competent. English print, TV and radio have far fewer spectators than Urdu and have far greater control amongst opinion-makers, leaders, companies and the upper strata”.

Pakistan has some of the most diverse And impactful media among South Asian Countries. The media have freedom of speech to a significant degree. Over 89 TV channels feature beam soaps, comedy, music, movies, religious expression, talk shows and news of the hour. Though criticised for being unprofessional and politically motivated, the broadcasters significantly contributed to the media and the Pakistani social environment. There are various radio channels and they are considered to be an important information source, in particular in rural areas. Most of the private radio channels also provide news and journalistic content through their radio medium across the country as the radio will also be the ultimate irreplaceable source of information in Pakistan. But music and entertainment are the most radio content. From big national Urdu newspapers to small local vernacular journals, there are hundreds of Pakistani daily papers. The ownership structure in Pakistan's media sector is very affected. There are three corporate media moguls or major media groups who have political affiliations to some degree. All three media groups are very powerful in politics and culture because they influenced both the print and television industry. The Pakistani press dates back to British India's pre-partition years when Diverse journal articles were published to push a communist partition policy. Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Dawn newspaper, published first in 1941, advocates an independent Pakistan. Nawa-i-Waqt, founded in 1940, is the conservative daily newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Muslim élites who were one of Pakistan's most influential supporters.

Hand-painted signage Era (1947-1990)

It basically started from the golden era of old Lollywood movies, the Punjabi film industry era at Lahore. The old classical hand-painted poster of Maula Jatt (Sultan Rahi) and Anjuman painted out the movie theatres, drawing the attention of the crowds towards itself. At the initial stage of the hand-painted era only a limited number of brands leveraged through this medium. These painted posters were found at various places and locations, but mostly at railway stations in the form of hand-painted boards.

Large format spectaculars Era (1990-2010)

For the first time in history, out of home advertisement was given a boost, in the format of large spectaculars and digitally printed formats. The big giant companies started advertising their brands in digitally printed mediums, brands like Coca-cola, Nestle, Unilever invested in large scale printed formats. After these giant brands, all the other top-notch brands follow their lead. Along with the change in medium and larger formats, pricing of these advertisements also went up high from the hand-painted price of a few thousand to hundreds of thousands for each advertisement printed. Even being high in price these formats started in the three major cities of Pakistan after this even the government and municipal authorities started imposing a tax on these. Lahore was the most clustered city with a lot of billboards which later on were removed by the government to prevent the cluster.

Outdoor to OOH (2010-present)

The outdoor advertisement was considered to support the TVC, the print advertising was the basic adoption with the big idea and theme of the tv commercial. Until 2010, the revolution of OOH started and the brand shifted to it as soon as it came to the market landscape. Brands started conducting on-ground activities, as an era we live in today people spend their time out of the home that is why the term OOH advertisement came to be where people have to pay attention to the advertisement they do not have any skip option as they have on many social media platforms. OOH is everywhere here and there, people have to pay attention to the products brands are offering.

Dentonic The Revolutionary Ad:

“Dentonic's first animated advertisement in the Pakistani publicity history. Among the long series of dental advertisements in Pakistani industry, and the list is very long, the impact and level of the iconic advertisement of Dentonic were not achieved by any other advertised product or service in the history of Pakistani advertisement industry. It has not only become one of the most iconic lively publicities in Pakistani advertising history but also the main character has made the remembrance of a lasting impression among every advertising enthusiast and professional in Pakistan. Dentonic is easily Pakistan's most iconic advertisement in the history of advertising and since then the advertisement sector has failed to establish anything at the same level”.

Censorship in Pakistan

Pakistan has some strict legal framework against the internet, film and advertisement. In late 2010 Pakistan did not have many restrictions on many websites access to such political, social and religious content available on the internet. At that particular time, Pakistan does not have a sophisticated blocking system and this leads to blocking entire domains as blogspot.com, youtube.com. It was considered as anti-Islamic and blasphemous. Pakistan also blocked government and army critical websites. In 2019, PTA blocked over 900,000 URLs for these reasons mentioned above.

The GALA Ad

Recently the Gala biscuit Ad was banned by PEMRA, due to "violation of the commonly accepted standards of decency but also socio-cultural norms of Pakistani society". Pemra claims that they received several complaints against this particular TV commercial, that a biscuit brand is promoting indecency in the society. Pemra advised the stakeholders to stop using irrelevant themes and content in context to their nature of the product and service. Therefore now every TV commercial is reviewed by an in house monitoring committee before telecasting it on TV.

Digital Era

In the digital era, every single famous series has its own printed merchandise and it targets people who are hardcore fans of those series. The best example for this is star wars. George Lucas made billions out of the Star Wars toys and merchandise. We live in the digital era, everything is done virtually. Digital era transforms the world, many Pakistanis are earning through various companies, by working online and doing freelancing, they are earning dollars. AR feature enables a multidimensional experience, it was enabled by Google many companies started using AR features to make advertisements more interactive. The best example for AR is Nissan’s Leaf ( electric car). It gives the audience a full package of brand experience due to the AR feature and product design.

Social Media

Social media has changed the dimension of the perspective of the world. Facebook has been booming in Pakistan as having 34 million active users and still increasing. It has a huge impact on consumer behaviour as people see so much stuff on social media while communicating with different communities. The social media we use these applications are by the west and we have to invest millions of dollars in the digital advertisement on various platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and more. For example, commander safeguard was originally an animated series that was definitely an advertisement to make people use their antibacterial soap. And to buy their product, they also show product placement. As they made a fictional character out of it, which fought germs. Mostly they were targeting children. Another important aspect of the advertisement is the product placement, it also engages mass media with popular culture. The best example of product placement in the future is now Pepsi perfect fan-made, also the cornetto placement in the Pakistani movie Karachi Se Lahore. To target the youth market segment social media platforms like Youtube, TikTok, PUBG are made and to grab their attention there are no better platforms than these.

YouTube

Youtube is a free online streaming application, youtube has become the new Tv for everyone nowadays. Many people even earn from youtube, for example, a Japanese kid named Ryan Kaji is a 9-year-old boy earning millions from youtube, he is a child influencer. Mudassir Siddique, he has a youtube channel named as village food secrets he earns around $ 3000 per month from youtube, he has 950K subscribers on his youtube channel. Drew binsky a YouTuber travel vlogger, he leverages his platform so that he gets sponsored for travelling different countries. Ptv also made a youtube channel for Ertugul ghazi dubbed in Urdu and earned billions of revenue from it, as the drama many seasons and people in Pakistan love to watch this drama.

PUBG

PUBG is a subsidiary of South Korea’s video game company Bluehole. The PUBG mobile earned over 1 billion dollars revenue from Pakistan in the last few years. Recently launched a new promotional song the famous Pakistani singer Asim Azhar, they are targeting the youth, PUBG is free and anybody can download it and play so the younger audience encourages to play and buy premium clothes and action weapons to fight in the battleground. They also hired the famous Pakistani YouTuber and online streaming gamer Ducky Bhai, he also plays and organizes online gaming tournaments across the country as well. He is influential in the younger population. PUBG was banned because many people, especially parents complained it also encouraged violence and killing in the essence of fun and gaming but later after the protest, the ban was lifted.

Tiktok

Tiktok is an entertainment short video applications which grab the attention of their audience as it starts that’s why it is named as TikTok as time-consuming, TikTok also get banned in Pakistan by the government because of the vulgar and unethical content being posted there by people but later on due to TikTok is owned by a Chinese company the ban was lifted and nowadays apps like PUBG and TikTok are like goldmines as the mega-giant company are also advertising on these apps.

Conclusion

Pakistan as developing economic state should be focusing on the dollar earnings from the social networking site such as YouTube and Facebook, the government should, however, filter out unethical content posted on any media channels but should not completely shut it down because now in this digital age, every single brand relay on this medium. Selling and buying on-line has changed the shopping game. Brands conducting digital amplification, on the Facebook advertisement has changed the advertisement game as it specifies the brand's target audience out of big clusters of the audience and reaches to them quickly, it also gives the report on how many reaches and impression an advertisement had. Online streaming games has reached another level of entertainment mainly for the youth as they spend their time on social media, games like PUBG are popular among the youth, nowadays people are earning from gaming platforms as well. Same goes for Tiktok people love recreating mini videos and getting into the new trendy challenges.

References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org. n.d. “Mass media in Pakistan.” Wikipedia. Accessed Jan 07, 2021.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_in_Pakistan#:~:text=The%20media%20in%20Pakistan%20dates,promoting%20for%20an%20independent%20Pakistan.
2. Zafar, Salman. 2014. “A trip down memory lane with, Morven Gold, Dentonic and NazPanMasala.” Tribune.https://tribune.com.pk/article/20742/a-trip-down-memory-lane-with-morven-gold-dentonic-and-naz-pan-masala
3. Rizvi, Raza. 2020. “Here is Why PEMRA Stopped Mehwish Hayat’s Gala Biscuit Ad from Airing on TV.” pro-Pakistani. https://propakistani.pk/2020/10/05/here-is-why-pemra-banned-mehwish-hayats-gala-biscuit-tv-ad/.