Watching television on the Internet has its pluses and minuses. It can never rival a good television set, but a good television portal on the web is one situation in which the advantages outweigh the drawbacks. Above all, of course, its virtue lies in the fact that it offers access to programmes without having to watch them at the time of broadcast.
With TV Southasia and its online portal, tvsouthasia.com, the main selling point is its Southasian-ness. For many Indians who have little contact with their subcontinental neighbours, it gives access throughout the day to programmes from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan. And that holds true for people in each of these countries, though satellite TV may already be offering them access to a significant amount of India-centric programming. (This April, TV Southasia also began broadcasting via satellite.) For those interested in their neighbours and what their television sets have to offer, it is genuinely pleasurable to watch chat shows, cookery programmes and music from throughout the region. If you have a good LCD monitor (the bigger the better) and fast, reliable broadband, this is certainly a site to get to know.
Having said that, there is a lot more that the TV Southasia portal will need to do if it is to be serious about its mission. The viewing experience at the moment is completely random, with the web-surfer having no choice in the matter. Log in, and take what you get. There is a programme schedule for the evening hours, but the actual programming does not really seem to stick to it. As yet, there is no facility for viewing on demand, an odd anachronism given the technologies currently available. You have to watch whatever you happen to chance upon, which in this reviewer's case was a random mix of documentaries, chat shows from Pakistan and Bangladesh, music performances, and a studio chat on online identity theft from Sri Lanka. Through the course of this spectrum of content, however, the level of sophistication remained fairly consistent, which is notable in itself.
There are currently five channels that are part of the TV Southasia experiment: Aaj TV from Pakistan, Rtv from Bangladesh, the Image Channel from Nepal, Tara Newz from India and MTV/News 1st from Sri Lanka. This number needs to be quadrupled at the very least, to make it much more representative of Southasia and its sub-regions, and to make it a desirable option for folks not just in Southasia but for those in the worldwide disapora. A sharp, updated focus on current affairs needs to be added to give the overall content more bite. How much cooking, gushing over studio guests, or guitar strumming can anyone watch? Yes, there are classical singers too, but when they cannot be viewed on demand, this does not really help.