The first digital cable TV network in the Arab World was finally launched on April 15, 2000 by E-Vision, a subsidiary of Etisalat, the Emirates Telecommunications Corporation.  Elsewhere in the Arab world "cable" is usually either shorthand for "wireless cable," which is itself shorthand for the MMDS microwave systems or for …

Viacom is the junior partner in the Showtime Middle East joint venture with KIPCO (Kuwait Investment Projects Co.), an investment vehicle for certain members of the Kuwaiti royal family. Showtime carries a bouquet of some 16 Western channels, plus 10 audio services, and claims some 180,000 subscribers. Redstone spent some …

DUBAI: Investment bankers are generally a strange bunch. Take any leading stock and some will take a buoyant view while others are more or less pessimistic, even though they are all working from much the same set of data and company core information. But in regard to American media giant Viacom—which …

When reporters and TV news executives gathered at the Fira Palace Hotel in Barcelona last November for the Fourth News World Global News Forum (with participants drawn from the ranks of CNN, APTN, BBC, ITN, CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox News, among the many media organizations represented), the atmosphere was very …

Introduction  The purpose of this study is to look at Greek adolescents' television viewing and how it relates to their attitudes toward the family and traditional relationships between parents and adolescent children. The approach used here is the cultivation hypothesis. The cultivation hypothesis states that the more television people watch, …

The Intercultural Communication Conference, an annual conclave of communication scholars sans frontieres in Coral Gables, Florida, is nothing if not diverse. The 18th meeting of the conference, sponsored by the University of Miami School of Communication March 1-3, had human rights as its central theme, but even that could cover …

The increasing interconnectedness of the world's economic, political, and social systems have made individuals' perceptions of other national and cultural groups increasingly consequential. More and more of the decisions that individuals and societies make have international ramifications. Although international travel is increasing, many individuals' knowledge of people of other societies is …

Introduction: Cultural imperialism--The nascent stages  Critical theorists have coined various phrases in reference to notions of "cultural imperialism." An examination of the international communication literature will reveal several different terms such as "media imperialism" (Boyd-Barrett, 1977); "structural imperialism" (Galtung, 1979); "cultural dependency and domination" (Link, 1984; Mohammadi, 1995); "cultural synchronization" …

The world's media is being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer companies. Is it just paranoia to suggest global media giants are willing to forgo journalistic quality and ethics in exchange for shareholder return? Mass media has always been influenced and controlled by megalomaniacs; will the corporations be …

(This story was published in the February 2001 issue of Digital Studio magazine and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the editors. For background on Dubai Media City, please see "The Dubai Digital Broadcasting Miracle," by Abdallah Schleifer, in our last issue.) An evening dominated by a spectacular firework display marked …