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