Television as a Medium of Information for Rural Development in Bangladesh: A Case Study of Dinajpur District

Abstract

The scarcity of information on communication channels is a great threat for rural development where majority of the people are illiterate thus, do not know how to access information themselves. This study was undertaken to identify the use of television among rural communities of Bangladesh which was conducted in three villages of Dinajpur district, Bangladesh. The questionnaire included information on various information needs of the people under study, different sources of information and peoples’ awareness regarding informative TV shows. The study block included 150 households where more than 50% of the respondents had TV with cable connections. The main source of information as per data analysis was radio (83.33%), cell phone(66%); newspaper (64%) and personal contact (68%) followed by television (62%). Only 19% and 18% dwellers in the study area were aware about different health and agricultural programmes on television respectively. People were found unable to access information through TV due to the inconvenient schedule of the programmes having messages for rural development. So authors recommended that there should be dedicated TV channels to broadcast more and more programmes specifically for rural people at their convenient time.