Arab Television: The Future is in your hands.
A typical TV channel's schedule used to be like a balanced meal, a little bit of everything in the right amounts. The governments, with their strict political censorship monopolised terrestrial Television. Lebanon was the exception; it had cultivated its own bouquet of politically diverse channels during its long civil war, when each faction had acted like a stand-alone government. These were used to competing with each other for audience, the other arab terrestrial channels didn't.
Then things changed, ArabSat was set into orbit. The lebanese channels went pan-Arab. With its modern approach, LBC was number one. Pay-per-view took off but remained a luxury only a minority is prepared to pay for. Satellite reception dishes were springing up on every roof. The Terestrial channels lost their monopoly and were introduced to the concept of competition.
Over the years we've seen so many channels. MBC, the Arab satellite channel with the largest viewership, was the first to establish a free view network with specialised content channels. MBC 1, 2, 3 and 4 each aimed for different target audience. Aljazeera is following suit with its own set of channels, rather than build a network of entertainment channels and compete with MBC; Aljazeera has aimed to provide a set of complementary news channels. The latest being an English language news channel, ‘Aljazeera International', an attempt to capitalise on the Aljazeera world famous brand name.
Other than these successes there are hundreds of new ‘music channels'. Relying solely on flirty SMS messaging for income, this type of channel is a direct consequence of the Egyptian satellite company ‘NileSat' selling its channel bandwidth cheaply. This made the smallest income channel a viable proposition. These are borderline channels but they are setting a new trend: Cheap channels with cheap content, cheap standards and ultimately a cheap simple audience.
It is the viewer who decides which type of channel survives. We will vote with our fingers, some voting through their remote control, and the more gullible through their mobiles. So dear audience; which will it be? Good quality specialised television or cheap flirty SMS TV?