Drama kar kay GEO!

Just like the Fukushima nuclear plant, Pakistan is just so unstable these days. The economy is failing, the governance is bad and people die every day. Everything is such a mess and it is all government's fault because we were pious enough as we do not vote properly. And then when we thought, we had a chance in the game of cricket. We found out that they "sold" us. And to top it all, GEO Super was "closed" followed by AAG TV. Haye! Pakistan ka ab kia hoga!

Yes, two weeks ago, Pakistan suffered a mini-apocalypse of epic proportions. GEO Super was "closed" and all hell broke loose. It was as if the whole moral fiber of our society just dissolved. From humans, we have turned into animals or maybe aliens. GEO Super was the reason why we played sports. Did we? Bolo, jawab do. Give a license. Sign a petition. Kuch karo!

And if that seemed not enough, then the poor, very innocent AAG TV, the NAUJAWANO ka channel (channel for the YOUTH), was pulled off-air. Yes, it is an attack on youth empowerment. No one has the idea how much people will miss Baaji Online? Not to talk about how Indian Pakistani was with its music line-up. Haye! Bhuj gayee aag!
Earlier this week, Cafe Pyala, one of the many voices of reason in Pakistan, covered the story of GEO, PEMRA and their ongoing relationship drama. According to GEO, PEMRA pulled its channels off but PEMRA says that it only halted AAG TV as it did not comply with the license regulation. As Cafe Pyala rightly pointed out that GEO Super had landing rights to broadcast in Pakistan and they were not forced by PEMRA to be off-air, instead GEO itself halted their transmission and replaced it with its logo crossed out with red paint.

Courtesy: Cafe Pyala

Any sane person knows that if a transmission is disrupted, you do not see anything but white noise.

White Noise

How come AAG TV had white noise but not GEO Super? It is because AAG was truly asked to be pulled off-air and GEO Super was not. AAG had a broadcasting license where as GEO Super has a landing right license. A broadcasting license allows you to uplink a satellite channel from Pakistan where as landing rights is the permission required to show a channel on the cable networks. Furthermore, a company can only hold four broadcasting licenses. Click here if you want to read a full post about this issue as it had been covered by Cafe Pyala in detail.

The story does not lie in licenses only. It also lies in the channel's financial book. As a private entity, nobody would actually know whats going on unless someone leaks something. However, my sources told me that parts of GEO are not fit enough for operation. They have problems with financing their channels, especially with GEO Sports. And this is not the first time I am hearing about this. When I worked at Jang as an intern some years back, GEO employees usually complained to Jang employees about delays in payment. Furthermore, GEO has to pay 900 million rupees in tax to the government. The matter of unpaid tax, unsurprisingly not on Kamran Khan's lips, is going through the Court.

Furthermore, GEO has a "holier than thou" approach. It claims that it, single handedly, brought sports back to life. Yes, them. Not Aisam who played good tennis; not Naseem who ran her best during South Asian Games; not Afridi who handled cricket so nicely; as it was GEO Super who did it. Above that, they claim that they faced "losses" while providing healthy entertainment. #orly? And the ads they showed almost every second ball during the Cricket World Cup were for whom. Me?

If GEO Super was really incurring losses and had good intentions, a ban to broadcast is just a joke unless it is self-inflicted. When GEO News and GEO Entertainment were really banned in 2007, they pushed their transmission on the Internet. How come they would not do it now? If PEMRA is being "unfair" then they could have continued showing GEO Super and AAG TV on the Internet. I am sure a lot of people would tune in if they were interested in sports and "youth" entertainment.

Furthermore, Jang Group (the parent company of GEO) as a media group has not evolved from its newspaper days. Whenever something "awful" happening to one of their channels, the other channels will start a sob-story. In 2007 when GEO News was being pulled off air, the news ticker was shifted to all of the rest of the channel on its network, regardless of the content being showed on these channels. It seems that they run their television channels like their newspapers, if you cannot place a story on the entertainment section, take it over the sports section. Furthermore, does AAG really has youth entertainment? If you showing Bitchy Baaji Online, the new show with Mathira, with Bollywood tracks is getting empowered, then indeed we are just so "deprived".

The whole solution to this mess is simple. GEO has a useless license under the name of GEO English. They should send a permission to PEMRA to convert this license into GEO Super. With an exchange of fee, the whole issue can be solved easily. However, fees are paid in money and GEO is asking the people to give them the "license" - a move that is "surprisingly" cheap and may have hidden agendas.