CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.0 Background to the Study Television drama is considered as a viable medium of entertainment, especially within the family and social circle. It is regarded as a means of communicating various societal values and norms. Brown (1994:173) refers to the entertainment that Television drama offers as active and re-active pleasure; referring to the fact that Television drama possesses inherent action and corresponding reaction from viewers. To a large extent, Televisiondrama does not only provide entertainment to its teeming viewers,it goes beyond mere entertainment; it plays a vital role in addressing development issues in society. Television drama touches on various aspects of human endeavours such as politics, ethnicity, religion, economy and science fiction. Apparently, people learn about their societies through what they watch from television, which makes Television drama relevant and more meaningful in addressing issues of social concerns. Television drama, if properly and ideologically structured, is viewed as having the potentials of communicating development messages which are considered as vital aspects of drama production. This line of thought is exemplified in some popular Television drama serials, such as Superstory. The Television Drama is seen as a tool for social crusading. For instance, Superstory has been used to enlighten the teeming population of Nigerian viewers on how to tackle Malaria fever, polio, reproductive health, poverty and environmental degradation, others include fraud, robbery, child neglect, child labour, child trafficking, drug abuse, unemployment, and the dreaded HIV/AIDS (Ezeokoli (1984).
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Many scholars believe that development issues should be readily made available to the people and properly addressed so that they can appreciate life from a better perspective. One of such impactful means of communicating development is through Television drama which seems to be more effective than news and current affairs. This is because people fundamentally relate emotionally to television drama which stimulates discussions about social actions in addition to the pleasure of feeling represented on the screen. (Martin-Barbero 1993, Gillespie 1995). Critics of Television drama have posited that the attitude of people towards drama in the Nigerian society and the world at large has placed drama in a position where patronage is rather low, pre-supposing that the society has failed to pay adequate attention to drama as an agent of change. They are of the opinion that people hardly give preference to drama. Furthermore, other scholars are of the view that Television drama has the capacity to influence social development. Ogunmilade (1980), Ezeokoli (1984) have argued in favour of drama as a veritable instrument of achieving social development. They contend that drama does not only set out to entertain or amuse but is also replete with developmental functions. Every work of drama has positive intention, a purpose or message, no matter how it is being coated.
However, many are worried that the producers of television drama tend to exaggerate the characters to reflect situations that are alien to societal culture. They argue that viewers expect television drama to reflect their daily lives, making them recognize themselves as actors in the stories. This in turn, is supposed to accord viewers a sense of belonging and also endear them more to watch. This is because television drama touches on everyday experiences which are highly recognizable, thereby setting in motion identification and feelings of satisfaction and pleasure; promoting a sense of social and cultural membership of a variety of different communities, at the same time counterbalancing the many processes of socio-cultural and
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political-economic marginalization experienced by many low-income citizens of Nigeria, (Umukoro (1994). To further buttress the above assertion, Fuenzalida (1994) reveals that the educational efficiency of the televised messages depends much more on the viewers‘ perception than on the intentions of the broadcasting station. When inter-education messages are embedded in identifiable settings with realistic characters in a television drama, the issues are not normally rejected butdebated. In HIV/AIDS communication, for example, issues of taboo can be introduced, and discussions after the programmes can be generated to help break the silence about and stigma concerning people living with HIV. In many other developing countries, like Nigeria, many serials or soaps have characters with whom they identify with. The life-examples of the characters in Television