The Entertainment Industry - Fun in Eurasia?

"It's all driven by money"
- Nigel Parsons, Associated Press Television News

The last conference session dealt with the entertainment side of television and the growing popularity around the world of formula shows such as 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?'

Evgeniy Zhumanov, host of a Russian-language version of the show in Kazakhstan, told the conference it was very successful and denied it represented a "dumbing down" of national television.
The main question from the public, he said, was why the programme could not also be shown in the Kazakh language.

Francisco Pascual de la Parte, Spain's Ambassador to Kazakhstan, said there had been an "enormous vacuum" in television production throughout the region after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The gap had been filled by foreign entertainment programmes, which had little to do with national culture. This change had had painful social consequences, he said, such as weakening family ties and the bond between generations.

The problem, according to Ioana Nitobe, a leading producer and presenter on Romanian television, was a lack of choice. "How can we know what the public wants if we do not give audiences any choice?" she asked.
Nigel Parsons, of Associated Press Television News, said the public generally had no choice because the trend towards light entertainment shows around the world was determined by commercial interests.
"It's all driven by money," he said.

This might be understandable in the west, where public interest in news programmes was falling, but there was still an appetite for information in developing countries such as India which should not be neglected.