CULTURE-BANGLADESH: Satellite Boom Threatens Video Industry

DHAKA, Nov 08 (IPS) - The owners of some 15,000 video rental shops scattered across Bangladesh are fearful the proliferation of satellite dish antennas will affect their business.

As of now, Bangladeshis rent 400,000 video cassettes every day - to be watched by an estimated total of nine million people. But since the advent of satellite television, that brought the world into drawing rooms and cafes, the sale of video cassettes has dropped 50 percent on on what it was two years ago, says one video shop owner.

Ironically, these same video shops now find themselves in the shoes of Bangladesh's precarious film industry which they themselves had threatened with closure some 11 years ago.

After the import of video cassette playing and recording machines was allowed by the government, the upper and middle classes rushed to catch up with popular Indian films that had been banned in the country since the India-Pakistan war in 1965.

Indian films made in the Hindi and Bengali languages were the staple fare of educated upper and middle classes before the 1965 war. The local film industry could not wean away this section of the audience and catered largely to the lower income groups.

With the advent of video casette units that could be hired out cheaply, a huge section of the cinema-going public switched to watching Indian films on TV sets.

Hollywood video fare also drew a large audience and it was not long before ubiquitous pornographic films surfaced, engaging an even greater viewership in this conservative Islamic country.

Industry sources say the majority of video cassettes now being rented are pornographic tapes from India, the United States, Sweden, Hong Kong and Thailand.

But with the advent of satellite TV in Asia, video shops have been forced to drop rental prices to as low as 12 cents per cassette.

Says Selim, a successful businessman in the city, "I hardly use my VCR any more for watching either Hindi films or for any other forms of entertainment."

Selim no longer needs to watch Indian films on the VCR. He can watch two a day on India's state-run Doordarshan Television that can be viewed in the city easily via dish antennas.

If they don't suit his palate, he can switch to Zee-TV, the Hindi language channel that is part of media magnate Rupert Murdoch's Star TV beamed from Hong Kong. (MORE)

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