Maverik Arab satellite TV
By Magda Abu-Fadil Posted Wed, Dec 1 1999
They love it. They revile it. They shudder when it tackles controversial topics and broadcasts them to millions of viewers in the Arab world and beyond. And many wonder how they ever watched television before it.
It is Al Jazeera, a satellite television station that, in almost three years of existence, has managed to grab virtually everyone’s attention and put the tiny Gulf state of Qatar, its home base, on the international media map.
Media experts feel that, until Al Jazeera broke the silence, there was an absence of serious discussion on Arab satellite stations because political and financial pressures exerted by most Middle Eastern regimes dictate a steady diet of mind-numbing entertainment or bland and harmless news and talk shows.
Al Jazeera was established at a cost of US$150 million, and it had major assistance from the Qatari government, which provided the buildings, administrative facilities and technical assistance.
As far as anyone knows, Al Jazeera is owned indirectly by the Qatari government. Many news entities in the Gulf are heavily financed or subsidized by the various governments through their ministries of information. But since Qatar abolished its ministry of information, it has been funding some media through quasi-governmental corporations.
Given its proclivity for tweaking official Arab noses, it’s doubtful that Al Jazeera is turning a profit. While the channel’s owners would like to make money, they certainly realize advertising revenues will remain scarce as long as their mission is to swim against the tide.
The channel’s daring approach to news coverage, analysis and editorials has led to its bureaus being closed in some Arab countries. According to Al Jazeera’s CEO, Mohammed Jassem Al Ali, satellite channels face two choices: either satisfy governments or satisfy viewers. “It’s time to have channels that satisfy viewers and their mentality and to respect them, which is what Al Jazeera is doing,” he told the London-based daily Al Hayat.
The station’s dedicated viewers and the colorful and engaging responses from callers to eyebrow-raising talk shows, such as “Al Ittijah Al Mu’akiss” (The Opposite Direction), seem to refute the argument that the Arab television-viewing public wants only variety shows, soap operas, Egyptian movie reruns and foreign programs.
Al Jazeera “has pushed other Arab satellite networks that existed before it to compete with talk shows that attract people in countries where state-owned television is not very reliable or free,” says Elias Austa, a Middle East correspondent for an international news agency.
Despite their limitations, other satellite stations such as the London-based, Saudi-owned Middle East Broadcasting Center and the United Arab Emirates’ Dubai channel have been trying to catch up with Al Jazeera by imitating its public-affairs and talk-show programs, Austa says.
“The main challenge Al Jazeera has provided was to give a chance to many people in Arab countries who did not have access to worldwide coverage to talk and be heard, whether they were right or wrong,” Austa explains, adding that the station’s professional coverage of events, even in Israel, has displeased conservative Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf region.
In an article for the magazine Middle East Insight, professors Jon W. Anderson of Catholic University and Dale F. Eickelman of Dartmouth College say that Al Jazeera’s application for membership in the Arab States Broadcasting Union was rejected in December 1998. The ASBU gave Al Jazeera six months to conform with the union’s code of honor, which promotes Arab brotherhood. Al Jazeera did not conform, and news of the shakedown hit the wire services and the Internet like wildfire and added to the station’s fame.
Emad Eddin Adib, the host of a popular talk show on the Arab-owned Orbit satellite station, a conduit for many Arab countries’ channels that compete with Al Jazeera, says technology can and does circumvent stifling press restrictions in the Middle East. In particular, Adib refers to the proliferation of satellite TV (Arab and other) and the Internet.
But, like the other satellite stations, Al Jazeera faces the economic challenge of obtaining enough advertising revenue to survive. How can a station survive when countries often targeted by its reporters, analysts and talk-show hosts pressure key sponsors to pull their commercials?
The key, some feel, is more local programming. According to Pierre Daher, chairman of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International, 30 Arab satellite stations currently broadcast 8,500 hours annually, but they only produce 3,500 hours. Daher told Reuters that Arab satellite stations face a serious problem that threatens some with closure and most others with mergers if they do not hasten to produce more local fare and rely less on imported programs.
To date, Al Jazeera’s main competitors have been MBC and the Arab News Network. The former is owned by Saudi investors, notably Prince Ahmad bin Salman bin Abdel Aziz, and the latter by a nephew of Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad.
MBC offers viewers a variety of shows in addition to news programs, and ANN is an all-news station. Another contender for market share is the Arab Radio & Television network, which has a mixed bag of programs and is owned by a group of Arab partners.
Not to be outdone, Kuwait has been toying with the notion of starting its own all-news satellite channel, to be managed in the private sector. Youssef Al-Smeit, then Kuwait’s information minister, told the widely read Arabic-language daily Al Hayat in April that his country planned to launch a news channel dedicated to Gulf and Arab viewers, but he declined to provide figures for the startup budget. He did, however, say that the Kuwaiti government might provide some facilities and technical assistance, both readily available in the country.
Private investors in Kuwait, which had the most freewheeling press in the Gulf region before its invasion by Iraq in 1990, tried five years ago to set up an all-news station with an initial budget of US$100 million and a 49-percent government stake.
CNN and Lebanon’s LBCI were supposed to have collaborated with the Kuwaiti station to help launch it in Paris, but the project was halted without explanation.
The newest Arab satellite station vying for audience share and advertising dollars is Al Andalus, which is based in Marbella, Spain. Its backer, Saudi millionaire entrepreneur Mohammad Al Ashmawi, says he aims to establish a broad base of both Arab and international viewers, with programs to be presented in Arabic, English, French and Spanish.
The purely commercial venture currently relies on news feeds from ANN in London, ART and the educational/cultural satellite channel Iqra’.
Egypt’s domestic TV fare, the historical leader in the region, is carried on satellite but has a hard time competing with the mix of programs on other Arab channels, most notably by the much-watched and talked about Al Jazeera.
“Al Jazeera is a maverick, and hopefully it won’t be the exception but become the norm,” a media adviser to a key Arab politician says about the all-news channel, adding that the station is a “healthy” addition to the media scene.
“I think Al Jazeera is serving a very good purpose because it’s presenting the Arab public with a free, uncensored discussion of issues concerning the Arab world at this time,” says the same media adviser.
Magda Abu-Fadil
Magda Abu-Fadil is director of university publications and coordinator of the journalism program at the Lebanese American University. She is a 25-year veteran of the international news business and spent her career covering Washington and the Middle East.