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Software houses can do lucrative business

By admin | April 17, 2007

The industry of Pakistan’s electronic media has been witnessing a rapid boom in the past two years, providing great opportunities for business and employments to the citizen in many outstanding branches of creativity.

In this short span, this industry has excelled in every field namely news bulletins, current affairs, informative, entertainment, music, sports, showbiz, arts, culture, education, talk shows, kids programmes and many other interesting areas.

These TV channels are successfully catering the demands of every age group of the society but unfortunately they are lacking to satisfy the mind of children, who fond of learning the education through entertainment. There are many programmes of kids, which are being produced by the local programmers but they are not producing cartoon shows, which is the favourite programmes of children.

Currently, local channels are broadcasting innumerable cartoon shows which were largely designed by foreign-based production companies. These shows, although, possess a large number of worldwide viewer ship due to its creative and fictional work but at the same time they have various deficiencies including obscenity which are destroying children’s mind instead of educating them. Their contents also tarnish the image of Islamic and eastern values and culture through characters and dialogues.

Fahad Hameed, co-owner of Cube Systems, stepped in this field aimed at producing cartoon shows particularly for local TV channels indulge essence of Pakistani culture, history and religious education in programmes.

“Our TV channels are compelled to broadcast all these foreign-produced cartoon programmes because they did not have any domestic source which can design cartoon programmes for them,” he told The News at Expo 2007.

He mentioned the foreign-made cartoon shows have different and contradictory aspects with our society. “Their society, characters, themes, cultural, religion and many other things are different with Pakistan society so how could our western cartoon shows educate our children.”

The domestic software houses are not producing cartoon programmes for television industry. But, some domestic advertising companies have designed cartoon commercials for TV channels. The commercial ad of anti-bacteria soap is one of them, who set a good example of education through cartoon commercial.

Fawad Hameed, a software engineer, said that his company recently made a cartoon show titled “Zafari in Bhambore” which describes the historical prospective of Bhambore city and its mountains and all the beautiful creations of adjacent localities.

“We can inculcate our norms, values and country’s history in our children through such cartoon programme shows,” he added. He said that his chief aim to design cartoon movies for TV channels which explains the sight and sound of country to viewer kids.

Cube Systems is a newly established software designing company, which has exported software programmes worth $20,000 in the last six years.

Fawad said that he is targeting local TV channels as they deserve the best in his view for its creative work and possess a giant market for big business.

He urged other software houses to impart their role and provide healthy and informative education to the children and enhance their business in the electronic media industry.

“A short cartoon series could be sold at Rs0.2 million to Rs0.5 million to TV channels, while lengthy cartoon series could give more revenue to the software programming companies,” he estimated. The cost of cartoon shows also varies with the quality and magnitude of programmes but one can earn three times more premium than expenditures by providing his creative services to buyer.

Talking with different professionals of software designing it concludes that all the animations, graphics, and other media related software has been taught in the country and many young professionals want to excel in their career as graphic designer/programmer.

But due to lack of system and opportunities in Pakistan, they immigrated to the other countries of the world.

Besides, emerging cellular phone companies in Pakistan could also be facilitated by software houses through designing cartoons and comics items for them.

With television channels many advertising agencies and production houses developed in the markets which also provide platform to artists exposing their skills and talents to perform their role keeping in view the need of the society. These all the production houses and advertising agencies are doing profitable business in the country. But, unfortunately, domestic software houses are not participating on the row of development.

There is a need for imperative attention toward children programme shows particularly cartoon programmes so that media companies could excel in the education of children and they are able to launch kids channel or cartoon channel in the country.

Topics: Showbiz |