TELEVISION OF A LIFETIME: A WITTY MINISTER

Continued from Vol 01 Issue 24

Dr. Qudrat-E-Khuda

I remember an incident from recent times. A sub-minister came to Rampura TV station to take part in a progam. In many cases, the program director is more involved than the producer in Rampura TV. The producer told the director to take care of the hassle of the minister's presence. The minister came; the director welcomed him and introduced himself. The minister was happy to meet the director, but immediately asked to meet the producer. The director replied that the producer is busy in the panel and will come meet him shortly. The minister took his makeup and stepped into the studio, but still he was looking for the producer. The producer, learning that the minister is constantly looking for him got scared – he thought that he must have made some mistake. The minister was also not a person to let things go – he decided not to start the programme without meeting the producer. Scared and petrified, the producer showed up. Seeing the producer, minister asked him to come closer. The producer slowly moved closer to the minister.
“Why so scared?”, the minister whispered into his ear.
“Well sir, I didn't come to welcome you”, replied the producer.
The minister said, “I understand, you were busy at work. Do you know why I was looking for you?”
In front of the silent producer, the minister explained, “This is my first visit to Rampura TV station, aren't you going to show me around?” The producer breathed a sigh of relief.

Ashish Kumar

I have another example of how everyone worked hand-in-hand in television. It was in October, 1965, when Dr. Qudrat-i-Khuda came to the studio to deliver a speech – it was to be a scripted speech which was written by Dr. Qudrat-i-Khuda himself in English. But the speech will be in Bangla. Only 25 minutes was left to go for the speech to be on air. In a rush, all the officials of DIT building took a page each and started to translate. A one-hour job took only 10 minutes. The whole speech was edited by renowned poet Shahid Qadri. I must mention that Shahid Qadri was once a TV producer too.
The level of support by the audience was equal to the dedication the TV staff had for each program. In history of television 'Tri Rotno' was a valuable addition. Even today, there are not many comedy programs on TV. The popularity of 'Tri Rotno' is still unparalleled to any other TV series in Bangladesh. It was a show of three: Heera, Chunni and Panna. Heera was played by Ashish Kumar Louho, Chunny by Khan Jainul and Panna by Abdul Jalil. A complete story was told in 25-30 minutes and was confined between the three small studio sets of DIT's TV station. With all the limitations, just using acting skills, 'Tri Rotno' became the most popular show.

Shahid Qadri

Once, it was decided that one episode would be on football. Although it was difficult to shoot outdoors, producer Abdullah Yousuf decided to go-ahead if the technical team supported him. There was no outdoor broadcasting facility available; they borrowed two cameras from the news section. They decided to record in segments similar to news shooting news. Then again, a 10-minute shot would take the whole day; if there is no breaking news the borrowed cameras could be used for the whole day, but how to gather spectators? Arriving at the location in Bashabo, the shooting crew was stunned. The football field was surrounded by spectators. They had already heard the news that 'Tri Rotno' is coming for shooting.  The recording took the whole day, and not only the audience stayed with the crew but also they followed instructions from the producer during recordings!

to be continued... ...........
 

The writer is Managing Director,Channel i
Translated by Zia Nazmul Islam