Evolution of Nepalese Television

good morning ladies and gentlemen i’m

sorry about the

little mix up with the technology

that was provided but whatever

was said about me pretty much sums up

what i am so i don’t see any reason

standing here in front of you and

explaining it more

but i just want to take you

a little memory lane that i have gone

through i’ll take you back to 1988.

that was not the year i was born

i was almost the age

that some of the student audience that

we have

this morning with us are into

your age group and back in 88 what i was

was very similar

but

accidentally i was pushed

into a career or a profession

that i was not tested for

i had judge

experience

i had no imagination what a tomorrow

would be

and i had no resume to present

to my ceo that morning when i got the

job

there was no interview staged for me

for any kind of job that you require

these days

so i would salute my luck

and the opportune moment that

a friend of mine just picked up the

phone that morning

and he said i’ve heard you complain

about what we play on television

now if given the opportunity would you

be able to take up or shoulder

television

and show the world how to do television

i said let’s give it a shot so

that’s how i began october of 1988.

the world of television let’s forget

about the world

the world of television in nepal we had

one

signal and it was only two years old

there was the first batch of television

people

who were equally good or bad

as i was because when they started

they also were in the wearing the same

shoes that i was wearing

that morning of 1988.

they knew nothing

so television was a camera

a microphone few lights

the cameraman shoots the picture the

sound

man records the sound and after

a while after it’s recorded the editor

edits

the footage and there is a signal

called broadcast signals that will put

it on

air for homes to watch you that was

television

that was television for me that was

television for the rest of the world

that was all i knew

now let me fast forward to today

what is television

people have reinvented television

people have de-learned

what they learned about television

people have forgotten how television

began

because nowadays each and every person

in the world is a television person

or an audio-visual person because you

have this gadget in your hand

called the phone now that phone

started as a phone when i started back

in 1988

this phone was beyond imagination there

was

a little talk somewhere an old magazine

in a barber shop

or in a doctor’s clinic

flip over there might be a small you

know

article that said someday you might just

hold a phone

that will be known as a mobile phone and

you’ll own it

you can talk to people that’s it

but now the evolution is

geometrical nothing arithmetical

anymore in this world so that technology

where i began back in 88 and the rest of

the world

experienced television late 40s early

50s

we were 30 years late but no

nevertheless

we were we got television in the color

form

day one so we have records on our own

but today now

everybody is a television person what am

i doing what am i

talking about what am i boasting about

that i belong to television

i don’t boast about it

i’ll give you an example if you go out

in the street or

if the tedx had allowed everybody would

have been taking out their

telephones and filming me or filming

whoever would be talking here

but thank god tedx has this rule

uh that takes me back to 1988 again

the world was a tedx ruled

environment no phones no recordings

whatsoever

if somebody bangs a car no recording

when you if you stab somebody run away

no cctv

footage you dance in the middle of the

road

nobody would do anything but

now everybody is filmed one way or the

other

all the time

so what’s the point of a broadcast

system that is known as television

if anybody in this room today wants to

be

an audio visual man or a man or a person

or a woman who wants to be working for a

tv station or a production company

you have competition from billions of

people now

when we started there was no competition

i was lucky my my generation of

television people were lucky

we had one channel to compete with

but still there was competition

there was jealousy there was

there were all sorts of wrongdoings

those days that

if somebody made a fantastic

program how do i pull that person down

the attitude was still there the

attitude

still remains and that attitude will

still continue to remain

for the rest of the history or the

history that we’ll be making

in the future so i don’t want to come

and talk about in detail about

the yesterday is anymore now we have to

look forward

the instance that i gave you about the

mobile phone

that there is an incident happening here

everybody takes out that mobile phone

and starts shooting in probably the same

fashion

right they just don’t look they just

aim and they shoot what they see

nothing exciting there’ll be 20 footages

and if you put it all together it’ll be

the same goddamn

footage from a little angled position

nothing different so being and

professional audiovisual person is that

21st person

who can still shoot that event

with a different angle

an angle where you can generate

interest from the people the audience

that you’ll have

you’ll choose the pictures to make a

mark

about an incident that everybody else

has seen

and a person

who would shoot that differently would

be a person standing tall

saying silently i’m more creative than

you

so that creativity is

is the little thin line that

distinguishes

a common audio visual person and a

professional

television or an audio visual person i’m

calling it audio visual because

now there is no distinction between

mobile photography

professional television photography

video photography

or film photography because if

i today make a material for

telephones that material is good enough

to go on big theaters and we can project

it on

cinema cinema halls and if you make a

cinema

out of professional equipment

and if you wanted to watch it on a

mobile phone

that is still possible so that is why

the world has

enlarged for us so i don’t call it that

i belong to

television anymore i i tell people that

i belong to the world of audiovisual

so the only thing i’m trying to derive

from today’s

short chat with you

is that try to be the cut above if you

really want to be an audio visual person

that cut above is you try to test

yourself

with how creative are you

and this word creativity is

such an entity if i know this gentleman

in the front

is creative

and i feel that i’m a little less

creative

and i feel that i’ll go beg

for that creative video of him he cannot

give it to me

and i might just have a very wrong

notion in my head

i’ll steal it from him i cannot steal it

from him

that thing called creativity is somehow

you’re born with it all you have to do

is realize that in early part of your

life

or you test yourself and say yes i’m

somehow creative

and you build on it and experience

builds that little foundation

to a skyscraper if you want to be one

but that foundation has to be strong

the foundation has to be professional

the foundation

has to be full of dedication and the

foundation has to be focused

so ladies and gentlemen my little

discourse today

gave you a very short history

from where i began to where we are today

and i’ve given you a common

factor that is hidden between us

and how we distinguish ourselves from

that crowd

and be that recognized one

so ladies and gentlemen i still feel

that there is plenty of potential

in the field that i have already

dedicated 30 plus years

i encourage people that come join us

because that creative crowd that is

required

to make content to be

the leader of the future is still lacked

it’s still lacking so we want to man

that creative

required manpower for creative content

for us and for the rest of the world

from nepal why not

and get started now

because television may not

be the medium after say 10 years

that would may not be the only medium

to showcase what you’ve made

as a audio visual material but

the mediums will change probably our

phone will be a router

i could just you know stream that

whatever film or

documentary or a music video or a talk

show that i make

and project it wherever i want to

project it

there will be a day this gadgets will be

gone

there will be one organizer just getting

up somewhere and say

okay this is what i want to play for you

it’ll just be played

it’s not far away i’m not imagining

things and telling you

because me being a person following this

audio visual industry for a long long

time

i can tell you technology changes

overnight

and it it it surprises me it

flabbergasts me

each and every time i go to a broadcast

fair

so for the future whoever wants to join

the industry of audiovisual i tell you

content is king

start thinking about content

filming things is not content it is the

raw form of content

if you can weave a story a credible

story around it

if you give the world to see the right

pictures

that is the trick of being the cutoff

in my field and

in your field if you choose to be one of

us

i thank you very much and i thank you

tedx

kathmandu university for this

opportunity

and i hope that was my time thank you

very much

you