DUBAI -- There was a big splash when MBC moved out of Battersea several years ago and took up quarters in its elegant lagoon-side section of the Media City complex here (see New MBC: The Marriage of Elegant Professionalism and Emirati Glitter, TBS 9). The move was followed by another stir …

Female preachers are proving themselves a force to be reckoned with on Arab satellite TV channels, preaching head-to-head with men in shows dedicated to religious debate. Appearing on such channels as Dream, Orbit, Iqra, ART, MBC, and Al Jazeera, these preachers often issue religious rulings (fatwas) on the air and …

The Arab viewer is in a state of bliss. Last year ended with some well-wrapped gifts in the form of free-to-air channels, and there are serious prospects for introducing new ones this year. This paper will focus on the arrival of two new free-to-air entertainment channels, Dubai's One TV and …

Inexpensive analogue satellite TV gear introduced to the Arab world during the 1990s, and the even cheaper digital TV satellite technologies that have followed since the beginning of this decade, have been instrumental in short-circuiting a number of stages in the evolution of the TV distribution landscape in the Arab …

In quantitative terms one could say that video clips dominate Arab satellite television. At any given time as many as a fifth of the free-to-air channels on Nilesat may be broadcasting video clips. Other programming categories that preoccupy observers of Arab satellite television -- specifically news, religion, and dramatic serials …

In a March 25 interview with The Washington Post, American Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice marveled at the contribution of satellite television to the emerging democratic trend in the Middle East and the world. Watching the Lebanese protestors in the streets, she argued, inspired people around the globe to take matters …

As news of kidnappings and beheadings flowed out of Iraq this summer, it was easy to assume that Iraq had fallen into a state of primordial chaos. The brutal forces of tribalism and barbarity appeared to be triumphing, and the modern appeared to be giving way to the medieval. Such …

Zafar Siddiqi, CEO of CNBC's Arab-world franchise CNBC Arabiya, has announced the impending launch of CNBC Pakistan, with headquarters in Karachi. With a team working currently out of Dubai and another in Pakistan, the new channel is in the last stage of negotiations for its license and the senior team …

This paper was presented at a conference organized by The Centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge on "Arab Satellite Broadcasting in the Age of Globalization" held 1-3 November 2002 and is reproduced with the permission of The Cambridge Arab Media Project. This version has …

I. INTRODUCTION The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) held its ninth conference in Doha, the Qatari capital, during November 2001. Members decided to establish an Islamic English-language satellite television channel. The main aim of such an initiative is apparently to educate the West about "real Islam," in light of …