Much to morning shows’ dismay and to our relief, PEMRA recently issued an order to Pakistani TV shows to improve their content. We have all seen PEMRA curb creativity and freedom of some of the most harmless things on TV but this is one instance where we stand in solidarity with the media regulatory authority.

Lately, morning shows have become an excruciating headache with their mindless and shallow segments, long wedding weeks, and just general gibber gabber.

Here is what PEMRA issued:

The issue, rather blatantly, states that the morning shows ‘exploits the cultural and religious values of the viewers’ and that must be stopped. If we dissect this sentence, it is indeed true that morning shows exploit our national obsession with all things shadi by holding weeding weeks, some ten times during the year.

Then there is the gora rang obsession that’s being milked by every other morning show by advising women on how to improve their kala rang.

Admission of Guilt

That being said, in a recent interview with dawn.com, Shaista Lodhi admitted to starting the wedding week trends in morning shows. So you guys, we finally have a culprit who confessed herself. Hallelujah!

“The host is hardly ever questioned and it’s very wrong,” admitted Shaista Lodhi, who recently retired from the whole morning show parade, some six months back.

“I started off the trend for weddings on shows, I’m the culprit. But then it all went overboard. Even in a wedding-centric show, channels can abide by certain limits but that rarely happens, Shaista said admitting her guilt.

“One of my very last shows was themed around how to get married in simplicity, within a small budget. It was a topic that I felt could be very helpful for viewers. But many times before, while enduring long wedding ceremonies on TV, I would wonder to myself what I was doing,” she further added.

Shaista Did It, So We Did It

Nida Yasir, who has been hosting a morning show of her own, was also interviewed for the same piece. She said that the reason she started holding long wedding weeks is because Shaista did the same and her channel had to compete for ratings.

As she herself puts it, “There was a time when we would air one wedding week per year but then Shaista Lodhi [another popular morning show host] began to constantly air weddings in her morning show for another channel. The ratings of my show started going down and I had no choice but to launch into a long wedding season of my own!”

Shaista Lodhi also corroborated what Nida Yasir said. She mentioned that in this pressure to win the rating race, morning show hosts including herself end up negating who they are. “I’m a doctor and when I would sit next to a guest who would declare that depression could be cured by eating okra, I would cringe within.”

Similarly, she narrated how mental illnesses like Schizophrenia are equated to being ‘possessed’  on morning shows and how they’re quite literally endangering lives. She said that even if she wanted to add any intellectual or insightful quotes, she was stopped by her heads because apparently, no one wanted to hear them.

Towards the end, Shaista mentioned how sometimes financial needs make one to do things they wouldn’t do otherwise, “…I got tired of it a long time ago but I couldn’t back out because I was a single mother at the time who had bills to pay. Now that I could leave the business, I immediately did so.”

What do you think of the whole situation? Let us know in the comments.