The Road Not Traveled One of the most intriguing Arabic-language television dramas in recent years was The Road to Kabul (2004), which told the story of the Arab and Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Or rather tried to tell, since The Road to Kabul never made it past episode eight. The state of Qatar, …
Read More »Inside Arab Reality Television: Development, Definitions and Demystification
Nearly everybody agrees that reality television in the Arab world has changed the way we, as viewers, relate to television. This programming genre has been the center of much debate ever since the first group of reality participants was locked up in a villa. These views can be divided in …
Read More »Cultures in Orbit
Parks, Lisa. Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Paperback. 256 pages. ISBN 0-8223-3497-6. $22.95 Reviewed by Lamees M. El Baghdady Cultures in Orbit is a critical paradigm of both television and cultural studies. Unlike previous research, which has focused mainly on direct satellite broadcasting and …
Read More »Imaginations and Borderless TV
Thomas, Amos Owen. Imaginations & Borderless Television: Media, Culture and Politics Across Asia. New Delhi, India: Sage, 2005. Paperback. 290 pages. ISBN: 0-7619-3395-6. $23.50. Reviewed by Samaa Aly El-Batrawy This book is about exploratory research into the growth and development of transnational TV in Asia, analyzing its impact on advertising industries in …
Read More »A New Media Order
Chalaby, Jean K. (Ed.). Transnational Television Worldwide: Toward a New Media Order. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. 264 pages. Paperback. ISBN 1-85043-548-0. $24.95. Reviewed by Ralph D. Berenger When legendary American broadcast news pioneer Edward R. Murrow first saw a demonstration of television in the 1940’s as an extension of radio, he …
Read More »Interview with Moez Masoud, Host of ART’s English-Language Islamic Talk Shows
Moez Masoud is a 27-year-old Egyptian who hosts his own English-language Islamic talk shows, Parables from the Quran and Stairway to Paradise, on the Saudi-owned ART satellite network. With several new TV contracts in the works, including the possibility of a show on an American channel, the handsome young economics graduate …
Read More »The Love Network: New Coptic TV Channel ‘Aghapy’ Hits the Airwaves
An elderly man lays bedridden in his lower middle-class home in Shoubra, a largely Christian neighborhood near the heart of Cairo. Paralyzed for some 14 years following an injury to his spine, the man rarely leaves his home, as doing so has become an unbearable hassle. Until recently, this misfortunate …
Read More »‘Zii`!’ (Broadcast It!): Local Manifestations of the Global in the Egyptian Television Show Al Camera Al Khafeya (Hidden Camera)
“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 …
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