ABSTRACT

The number of Arab-owned television channels has increased so rapidly in recent years that most people have lost count. A 2007 prediction that there would be 500 satellite channels by the end of 2008 (PARC 2007: 14-15) turned out to be an underestimate. Nevertheless, that round figure conveys, at least statistically, what ‘multi-channel environment’ means in the context of Arab television. The implications of such proliferation are the same in Arab countries as elsewhere. Arab analysts comment repeatedly on fragmentation of audiences, insufficient growth in television advertising, and dilemmas about how to supply viewers with new content. Yet Arab television in the postbroadcast era also has characteristics of its own. Arabic-language programming easily crosses borders within the region, from Morocco to Oman, and other countries with Arabic-speaking populations. Although this large transnational market could be an economic blessing, the unstable nature of Arab politics, both within and between countries, tends to politicize pan-Arab media. Public statements by representatives of authoritarian Arab governments show that they still see television – whether publicly or privately owned – not as a creative industry but as a tool of domestic propaganda and foreign policy. It might be conjectured that the demise of the captive audience, brought

about by multiplying channels and diversifying modes of content distribution, would undermine television’s usefulness to ruling elites. Indeed, commentators have suggested that innovative content on competing channels is of ‘potentially enormous significance for the democratization of Arab societies’ (Kraidy 2007: 55), that it helps to ‘eviscerate the legitimacy of the Arab status quo’ (Lynch 2005: 150-52) and nurture ‘public dissent in a culture that has long prized consensus’ (Power 2005). On the other hand, harsher assessments of global media transformations in the digital age highlight forms of business elite consolidation hiding behind a façade of diversity. Convergence of television, mobile telephony and the internet presents investors with opportunities as well as challenges. Dan Schiller (2007: 114) points out that ‘increasingly variegated’ sources of revenue have helped the largest media conglomerates both to absorb the rising costs of programming and to try out new cultural commodities. Media executives have come to regard different kinds of cultural

material simply as ‘content’ that can be repackaged or ‘repurposed’ for delivery across different kinds of media outlet (ibid. 2007: 115). In other words, a mass audience may still exist if figures for all forms of access to the same item are aggregated. It just depends how questions about audience fragmentation are posed. For W. Russell Neumann, who studied the impact of 1980s cable television in the United States, they constitute a ‘continuing and central problematic of political communications’ – the key question being about balance: between centre and periphery, between different interest factions, between competing elites, and between central authority and the ‘conflicting demands of the broader electorate’ (Neumann 1991: 167). That is to say, media users may fragment or coalesce at different times and places, which calls for continual weighing of the power balance between cultural producers and consumers (Garnham 2000: 118-19). Post-convergence television in the Arab world raises questions about the

relative power of media businesses and media users, both as individuals and as groups. This chapter looks at changes on the business side, in channel expansion and strategies for retaining viewers, and on the user side, in access not only to television but to the internet and mobile phones as well. It then takes television talk about social issues as a testing ground for whether experimentation with new content owes more to the business motives of media owners or to the demands of ordinary viewers, intent on discussing shared social concerns. These alternatives align with the manipulation/empowerment axis that often underlies analysis of audience participation in television talk. Whereas political debates may be specific to a particular locality or social group, talk about personal and family relationships has the potential for mass appeal because it involves what Graham Murdock (2000: 199) calls the ‘bedrock experiences of everyday life’. In the confessional genre of social talk associated with the US presenter Oprah Winfrey, there is tension between excessive personalization of social problems, which cuts them off from wider social structures and possibilities for collective action, and ratings imperatives, which oblige presenters to make audiences feel empowered by setting talk about personal experiences in a wider social frame (Shattuc 1997: 96). At the same time, the business of creating low-cost drama by getting ‘ordinary people’ to ‘open up’ on television presents a myriad of issues about who is really in control (e.g. Carpentier 2001; Couldry 2003; Ytreberg 2004). Therefore, the final section of this chapter briefly probes ways of understanding moves towards unprecedented levels of self-disclosure on Arab talk shows in the post-broadcast era.