Rime Allaf, January 2009

Television holds a unique position in the Arab audiovisual world. It’s a pity then that more stimulating programmes targeting young people are not hitting the airwaves.

In America, the country where most television production originated, TV has gotten a lot of bad press over the years, generating derisive vocabulary to describe the device itself (idiot box), the material it broadcasts (brain mush), and even its lethargic viewers (couch potatoes). Such scorn is certainly deserved for much programming on American television, and for copycats around the world, but remains absent from nostalgic references to shows and programmes that have defined eras and even shaped social and political agendas. Indeed, the spread of American popular culture, with all its delights and its horrors, is much indebted to an array of television programmes which entered the living rooms of households the world over and turned their stars into icons for successive generations.

Those were the golden years of the big networks on the little screen, symbolised by the phenomenal success of detergent-sponsored soap operas (many of which are still running after decades), of big-money game shows and of early morning and late-night chat sessions around sofas and ubiquitous logo-bearing mugs. While certain sitcoms and adult series have continued to break records and apparently run in a loop on every channel in the world, it has been difficult to recreate hits in the current media jungle, where various communication tools compete for the audience’s attention and loyalty in a saturated market and where cable television packages can be tailor-made to customer preferences. This challenge is becoming greater with the advent of digital television, allowing viewers to interact with their sets and to choose the time they watch their selected shows, in effect driving programming and the concept of “prime time” (and with them the essential advertising windows) to a premature grave.

Broadcasting to millions

In the Arab world, the picture is not so bleak, and it is not (for once) because the region lags behind in given areas. The habitual coverage about Arabic television in Western media has merely scratched the surface, and reporting has mostly consisted of clichés about Ramadan serials and supposedly incendiary news reporting. What has escaped critical analysis is that pan-Arab television still seems set to enjoy years of profitable glory, and that many characteristics of Arab society continue to grant it a unique position in the audiovisual world.

Seen from afar, the rooftops in most Arab cities resemble one another, showing little distinction between affluent neighbourhoods and poorer ones. With countless rusty dishes turned to the sky in a single direction, as if supplicating in unison the gods of free entertainment and information to beam non-stop broadcasts, there is little doubt that pan-Arab television has become the true opium of the masses – a conveniently inoffensive addiction which most governments are not keen to cure.

In Arab homes, television has cast itself into the most central of roles, even in its location as the focal point of the living room. With most households owning only one set (for economic reasons, but also because of social norms), the television is treated with care when on standby and covered with a lace doily to preserve it from the menace of dust. Once the television is turned on, the whole family will probably gather around it, enjoying refreshments or a light dinner and settling down cosily for the evening. In the region, watching television remains a social activity for the entire household and programmes are unlikely to require parental guidance regardless of the time of broadcast, a trend long forgotten in the West where programmes are more distinctly targeted according to age and other demographics.

On this all-important television set, hundreds of free-to-air satellite channels compete for attention, relegating Pay TV companies to cater for a tiny niche around the Arab world. The situation for the majority is truly unique: across 22 countries from the Maghreb to the Arabian Gulf (not counting expat Arabs numbering millions), a potential audience of nearly 300 million is coveted by relatively similar broadcasters, offering comparable programming (and often the exact same serials) in one language, making no distinction between the haves and have-nots and appealing to all socio-economic classes (unlike the more discriminatory written press or the internet).

This modern audiovisual marvel is intensified during Ramadan, when life begins to centre nearly exclusively around special programming, which itself religiously follows the holy month’s schedule and which is a perfect illustration of the nature of Arab broadcasting. Of particular noteworthiness is the essence of the serials: lasting a single month and with episodes aired on a daily basis, by necessity, they are ephemeral but viewers develop a powerful, even passionate rapport with them – unlike the rapport with long-running Anglo-Saxon shows which is cooler. While longevity has its pros, the impact of the famous Arab serials is much stronger, and the public’s affections more intense.

Lack of substance

Even more noteworthy is the lingering effect of some serials, which continue to be discussed, praised, missed or mimicked months after the original broadcast; the aphorism that life imitates art is certainly demonstrable in this case, but more interesting is the fact that art, initially, had really imitated life in the first place. In other words, the appeal of many serials (especially Syrian ones) continues to be in the perception, or even the reflection of viewers’ own lives, as they live it or as they wish to live it, as opposed to the life of most imported serials which seems far-fetched. Nobody really lives like “Friends” – even in the US – but most do live like the numerous Syrian series.

This is a point of considerable import to the understanding of this distinctive social weave, which continues to roam around its own reflection; it is at once a blessing, with its realistic and unifying embrace of the entire family, and a curse, with its potentially suffocating disregard for individualism and independence and its blatant neglect of the younger generation’s needs.

Indeed, there is much to deplore about the quality of the broadcasts to which Arabs are exposed, and which they often consume eagerly. There is surprisingly little differentiation in the finished products offered by a multitude of channels; on most, productions are sleek, studios are modern, presenters are sexy, music clips are hip, and even clerics seem affable. But on channel after channel, there are practically no breaks in the system, no space for real cultural, intellectual, literary, scientific, or even social programmes. While such programmes are available on the state-owned terrestrial channels, most ‘serious’ watching on pan-Arab satellite is solely the domain of news.

It is with the young generation that broadcasters have been the most careless. Young people in the Arab world are getting lost in a sea of superficial programming, with little to offer them in the way of an intellectual challenge. There are no age-specific educational programmes, in the likes of PBS’s Sesame Street for small children, or BBC’s Open University for young adults, and so-called children’s hours mainly consist of cartoons and exaggeratedly infantile, simplistic and poorly produced shows which can hardly stimulate developing youngsters.

The young generation is being thoughtlessly thrown into a generic entertainment world, which, although protected from the violence often found in Western programmes, remains inappropriate and unchallenging for inquisitive young minds. Television for young Arabs does not even correlate with the exciting notion of forbidden or secret pleasures; while scantily dressed beauties undulate freely to the rhythm of the latest hits on all pan-Arab channels, there is little privacy in typical domestic settings to dream about the little that is left to the imagination. Nor is watching television in cafés with friends, puffing on their water pipes, saving them from sinking into apathy and lethargy.

Enter the internet, for the lucky few who can afford and access it. Where pan-Arab satellite television has been a unifier, the internet continues to be a great divider in the Arab world as the gap between the poorest and the richest, and the most educated and the quasi illiterate, continues to grow. Censorship notwithstanding, the privileged Arabs who can visit their chosen websites at the click of a mouse are but a drop in a sea of remote control yielding, but powerless, compatriots.

These limitations have only increased the appeal of wireless devices, easier to access in spite of high prices. From their mobile phones, the Arab world’s young and restless have been getting their kicks, escaping societal and parental restrictions, by abandoning themselves to text messaging and daring encounters of the Bluetooth kind – under the very noses of the strictest, but oblivious, chaperones.

Young people are not necessarily unhappy with their audiovisual options, and they often continue to aimlessly watch even when out with friends. They do not know, however, that they are missing being challenged by thought-provoking, educational or inspiring programmes, for lack of better activities, and that it may be too late for them when they find out.

Rime Allaf is an international consultant and an Associate Fellow at London’s Chatham House. She blogs at Mosaics.