Culture of Bhutan - Radio, Television, Internet, and Movies

Radio, Television, Internet, and Movies

In the early 1960s, the Third King of Bhutan began the gradual process of introducing modern technology to the medieval kingdom. The first radio service was broadcast for thirty minutes on Sundays (by what is now the Bhutan Broadcasting Service) beginning in 1973. The first television broadcasts were initiated in 1999, although a few wealthy families had bought satellite dishas earlier. Internet service was established in 2000.

In 2002, the first feature length movie was shot in Bhutan, the acclaimed Travellers and Magicians written and directed by Khyentse Norbu, the esteemed lama and head of the non-sectarian Khyentse lineage. The movie examines the pull of modernity on village life in Bhutan as coloured by the Buddhist perspective of tanha, or desire.