By Mursi Saad El-Din I have just finished reading Arab Television To-Day a book recently published by I.B. Taurus and written by Naomi Sakr, a reader in communication at the School of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminister. Arab Television To-Day reads like an in-depth research on the conditions governing the world of media in the Arab region from the 1990s to the present time. The author starts with a discussion of the effect of satellite television on the usual patronage which had previously dominated the region's television output. These new channels have brought about a new system of ownership "in which," according to Sakr "some owners were nominally private, but did not immediately hand market power to consumers or to cultural producers and to other professionals." This means, the author explains, that the so- called new Arab media outlets are still effectively under state control. The author believes that satellite television channels were created as an instant weapon at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, without any accompanying legislation to oversee their independence. New entrance to the Arab television landscape, Sakr explains, can be categorised according to three pre-defined approaches to the business of broadcasting. In a dual-product model in which advertising revenues finance content, television owners supply programmes to viewers as a means of supplying viewers to advertisers in the sense that audiences form a potential market for items to be advertised in programme breaks. This means that advertisers' interest can influence programme development and scheduling on the basis of demographic calculation about viewers' age, purchasing power and daily leisure time. "In television globally," goes on the author "there are two obvious alternatives to this model. On the one hand, based on a distinction in status between consumer and citizen is the possibility of addressing television audience not as a market but as a public with an exhaustive range of information needs. On the other, is the distinction between satisfying market demand and satisfying demand for favourable publicity on the part of prominent political figures. Then there is the television that caters neither to citizen nor to consumer, but to the perceived self-interest of those with deep enough pockets, concerned with organizing information, so as to suppress or disseminate particular messages." Arab television channels launched during the first phase of expansion in the 1990s seem to fit at least the first and third of these categories in some respect. The author gives as an example Lebanon's privately owned LBC as the most market-oriented and intent on making profit. Other channels displayed the potential for overlap between the three models. Orbit for example which was launched in 1994 depended on affluent professionals. Its chief executive Samir Abdel-Hadi described Orbit as a commercial business and not a public service enterprise. It was Orbit that first experimented in 1994- 1996 with Arabic language news programming commissioned from a public service source, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Then Al-Jazeera was created in 1996 with a mission to become self-financing within five years, through advertising sales based on expectations of healthy viewing figures. Its failure in this exposed the politicised nature of advertising sales in Arab television. To save the channel Qatar's ruler continued to finance it: "portraying this decision as a public service consistent with Qatar's project of turning itself into a parliamentary democracy," Sakr says. The author then discusses how the changing regulations in several Arab countries opened the way to newcomers, and how the established players behind companies like MBC, Al-Jazzera, Dubai TV and Rotana expanded their operations into groups of channels such as Al-Resaleh which framed their efforts in business terms "not as spreading a message, but as meeting a market need. Like other channels they tailored their coverage to avoid offending advertisers." According to Sakr, the rate of new channel formation continued to rise and it is estimated that there are over a hundred channels now in the Arab world. One media expert commented on this phenomenon by saying that to start a new satellite channel all you need is a room and three cameras.
