ABSTRACT
This article explores the intersections between satellite television and mobile phone culture in the Arab world. The option of interactive television, offered by lotteries, quizzes and chat channels which demand that viewers call in or send messages to participate, effectively transforms the medium into a coin operated interface which bears resemblance with peep shows and live wrestling. Programs such as the 2009 three-dimensional (3-D) animated Al-Mofatish Korombo (Detective Korombo), female hosted quiz channels as well as television chat channels in which text dominates the screen, are marked by anxieties about the place of the body within the context of these new technologies and the prosthetic nature of the medium. By drawing on a tradition of puppetry and the video arcade, these convergences have reconceptualized the media body, switched television into an interface, and have dramatically altered the configuration of audience interaction with the screen. The resulting television aesthetic is one which copes with these anxieties by reverting to text as the primary medium through which viewers communicate within (and perhaps across) the parameters of profit driven channels.
