“Any work that I do depends on the will of the audience.” (Ibrahim Nasr, Akhbar al-Nuguum, 433, 1/20/2001) Introduction Over the past few years, a growing trend in television is the seeming willingness to push the envelope of so-called “good taste.” While this is not a new phenomenon, we are …
Read More »Whose Reality is Real? Ethical Reality TV Trend Offers ‘Culturally Authentic’ Alternative to Western Formats
Islamists have been some of the most ardent foes of reality programs on Arab television, forcing MBC’s Al Ra’is (Big Brother) off the air and staging protests or boycotts against LBC’s Star Academy and Al Wadi (The Farm). But now it seems at least some Islamists have decided to adopt a different approach: If you can’t …
Read More »‘Reality is Not Enough’: The Politics of Arab Reality TV
The neo-conservative Weekly Standard has called it “the best hope of little Americas developing in the Middle East.”(1) New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman enthused that it was the closest thing to democracy the Arab world has ever seen.(2) Sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Suadais, imam of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, has denounced them as …
Read More »The Long Wait: Reform in Egypt’s State- Owned Broadcasting Service
Since the fall of 2005, the Egyptian press has speculated giddily about the fate of the state-owned broadcasting service, which is laden with debt, haunted by corruption scandals and grappling with over-employment and other inefficiencies. Since the 1990s, there media specialists, government officials and foreign aid agencies have discussed how …
Read More »In Defence of National Television: A Personal Account of Eclectic Lebanese Media Affinities
Anyone who visits Lebanon will be struck by the excessive Lebanese use of space: Urbanisation literally is filling the space perpendicularly, up into the skies and the mountain ranges, and horizontally, as sprawling resorts or “developments” eat up huge chunks of the coast in Beirut and Doura, where two dumps …
Read More »Reconnecting the World: How New Media Technologies May Help Change Middle East Politics
In the Middle East, as elsewhere, politics sometimes receives an unexpected jolt that produces unanticipated consequences. This has happened during the past decade as information and communication technologies have become more pervasive and influential. This process is accelerating. A key factor in this expansion of reach and power is the …
Read More »The Battle of the Airwaves: The Rise and Proliferation of Iranian Satellite TV Channels
Today, Iranian air space is electronically penetrated by numerous radio and TV satellite signals that originate from the US and other countries around the world. In fact, it is probably safe to state that no other nation in the world is targeted by over 20 satellite TV channels and dozens …
Read More »The BBC World Service Arabic TV: Revival of a Dream or Sudden Death by the Competition?
Discussions of the significance of transnational radio news networks and their impact on Arab audiences usually arrive sooner or later at the unprecedented popularity of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) World Service Arabic Language service, the only news network to dominate ratings among Arab radio listeners. In fact, a new …
Read More »Anti-Americanism on Arab Television: Some Outsider Observations
In the United States since 9/11 it has been fashionable to criticize Arab satellite television, especially Al Jazeera, for being hopelessly biased and unfairly hostile to America. A great deal of the criticism comes from people who do not understand Arabic and have never watched Arab satellite TV, but they …
Read More »Television and the Ethnographic Endeavor: The Case of Syrian Drama
In contemporary Syria, the TV industry’s centrality renders it a particularly revealing site of ethnographic endeavor. It provides a valuable point of access to a complex and rapidly changing society, argues Christa Salamandra.
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