With the increasing pace of change in this technologically-equipped era of the media industry it becomes mandatory for media educators and students to stay on the cutting edge of professional practice.

Keeping in mind the significance of practical training for media students, the Department of Mass Communications, Federal Urdu University of Arts Sciences and Technology (FUUAST), Karachi, launched the one-day television transmission project. The objective of this project was to have an intensive television production activity which can provide experience to media students while enabling them to understand production processes, challenges and pressures.

Preparations were intense, from a morning show, talk shows on social issues, the past, present and future of FUUAST, women in media, poetry, media education, Pakistani journalism, journalists and their informal gatherings, to dramas and songs. Content-wise everything had been included in the transmission, recordings for which were held on Dec 17 and 18. The wave of thrill and excitement travelled from the teachers to the students. Different teams were formed to handle scripts, the guests’ line-up, camera handling, photography, programme directions, set designing, acting and anchoring.

The colour and feel of the atmosphere was emphasised further when field practitioners from newspapers, television channels and radio stations were called for discussions. The basic functions of media, i.e., content production for television information, education, entertainment and research could be seen fairly divided into the various contents of the programmes.

The transmission was supported, attended and participated by senior journalists, academicians and scholars including Idrees Bakhtiar; Shamim Akhter; Wussatullah Khan; Mazhar Abbas; Qaiser Mehmood; Sheen Farrukh; Afia Salam; Dr Fouzia Khan; Suhail Sangi; Rana Aqeel; Ashraf Khan; Khalid Farshori; Aqeel Abbass Jaffri; A.H. Khanzada; Tauqeer Chughtai; Naeem Sameer; Zaheer Zarf; Dilawar Abbas; Vice Chancellor, FUUAST, Prof Dr Zafar Iqbal; VC, University of Karachi, Prof Dr Muhammad Qaiser; Dean Faculty of Arts, Dr Seemi Naghmana Tahir; Dean Faculty of Management Sciences, Prof Salman D. Muhammad; Dean Faculty of Education Dr Shahida Sajjad; Dean Faculty of Science Dr Arif Zubair; Senate Member of FUUAST Prof Nasir Abbas; President, Teachers Association (Abdul Haq Campus ) Prof Dr Ismail Moosa; Secretary General Prof Najam ul Arfeen and Treasurer Prof Iqrar Qureshi.

This was a first of its kind activity by any public-sector university in Pakistan. The effort was immensely appreciated and welcomed. The university’s VC Prof Dr Zafar Iqbal presided over the inaugural show of the transmission. He said that practical learning and training is the backbone of media education. “I feel proud to say that our Department of Mass Communications significantly provides field exposure to its graduate students. We want to see our university among the 20 best universities of the country in the coming years. Our teachers and students have to work together with the university administration for creating a better academic and research environment in the university. We do our best to ensure the provision of basic facilities and equipment and hopefully one day our university will beat other institutions in quality of education training and research,” he said.

Prof Dr Tauseef Ahmed Khan, chairman, Department of Mass Communication, the team leader who guarantees the effective and successful completion of all projects, said, “Our department teachers and students are very talented and active. If provided with more modern facilities such as a radio studio, an internet café and e-library we can come up with the most efficient results in our field.”

He further added, “We charge our students nominal semester fees as they hail from the lower middle class. In this scenario, our funding and budget depend on university grant and external sponsorships for which we have to put in extra time and effort. It becomes easy to do this when we see more of our graduates being welcomed and accommodated in the media industry than other university graduates. The percentage of selected FUUAST Mass Communication graduates was the highest among the total selection of Mass Communication students in Karachi for the election cells of various television channels and newspapers in May 2013.”

The initial idea for the transmission was conceived by Prof Irfan Aziz, who is part of the Mass Communication department faculty. Explaining his idea, he said that the university was fortunate to have a television production studio in its Mass Communications department. “Normally this studio is used to teach students the basic technical skills for television production. They prepare short documentaries and dramas as part of their course assignments. The concept of television transmission for a day or so was to help them indulge in the reality of production environment to give them a 360 degree exposure of media life so that they can experience firsthand the pressures of deadlines, time and the work and gain expertise before joining the field. It was also to help them understand their specific strengths and weaknesses. The department understands that media jobs and journalism require passion and not university degrees alone and it strives to create a passionate media/journalism leader for the media industry in Pakistan and abroad,” he said.

The team consists of faculty members and final-year students headed by Mr Syed Raza Arif, a young and energetic faculty member in charge for television production courses. He said that the students have worked on this television transmission as their project and it is only through such practical assignments that they can prepare media professionals for the modern media market. This was an outstanding effort by the students for the students and it will help in their skill development. The other team members include Prof Dr Seemi Naghmana Tahir, Prof Saeed Usmani, Prof Auj e Kamal, Prof Shaheen Akhter, Dr Masroor Khanum, Ms Huma Waris, Mr Tayyeb Jajjvi, myself and others.

Mass media in Pakistan has gone through revolutionary changes in the past decade. At the same time, media literacy and education are also becoming essential for media practitioners. Practical learning projects like this television transmission by the academic sector in media education is a good omen for a country’s media and its future. In this era of global recession when job opportunities for university graduates are shrinking fast, the electronic media in Pakistan is experiencing an expansion. New television channels are coming up providing numerous job opportunities for skilled graduates. The exercise by the department of Mass Communications is going to promise a bright future for its students in this scenario.

The writer is faculty, Department of Mass Communications, FUUAST.