It has been a year and a half since US-funded Arabic satellite channel Alhurra started broadcasting on 14 February 2004. Even before the channel's launch, it was a magnet for controversy -- many in the Arab media denounced it as propaganda while some Washington insiders questioned the decision to spend …

DOHA -- There is no getting away from it. Al Jazeera continues to dominate the discourse, despite significantly improved competition (reflected in growing market share) from Al Arabiya and a step back over the past year from its past tendency to overly emotionalize, Fox TV-style, when framing the news. Nowhere …

In the ongoing debate about Arabic music video clips that currently engulfs the cafés and newspapers of Egypt and the rest of the Arab world, one frequently comes across critics who decry the apparent lack of diversity and meaningful messages contained in this pop culture genre. According to this argument, …

The Arab viewer is in a state of bliss. Last year ended with some well-wrapped gifts in the form of free-to-air channels, and there are serious prospects for introducing new ones this year. This paper will focus on the arrival of two new free-to-air entertainment channels, Dubai's One TV and …

Juha once remarked, as he sat on the beach and looked at the incoming waves, "There are more coming in than there are going out." Critics of Arabic music video clips may wish to ponder this wisdom and bow to the inevitable, since their efforts to stem the tide are …

Inexpensive analogue satellite TV gear introduced to the Arab world during the 1990s, and the even cheaper digital TV satellite technologies that have followed since the beginning of this decade, have been instrumental in short-circuiting a number of stages in the evolution of the TV distribution landscape in the Arab …

A voluptuous female swings her body back and forth in an atmosphere torrid with sex. She revolves around a respectable middle-aged gentleman seated behind a desk and surrounded by heaps of papers. The female bends her trunk and straightens her lower limbs in a desperate attempt to convince the gentleman …

Are Ruby's critics an obstacle to her stardom, or does the controversy over her secular style eclipse the star herself? The music videos that established Ruby's fame feature pelvic-thrust dance moves and revealing costumes, which infuriate a growing number of Middle Easterners. But compared to the gyrations and attire of …

Miles, Hugh. Al Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That is Challenging the West. New York: Grove Press, 2005. Hard cover. 438 pages. ISBN: 0802117899. $16.32. El-Nawawy, Mohammed and Iskandar, Adel. Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism. Cambridge, MA: Westview, 2003. Paperback. …

(Translated by David Wilmsen, TBS contributing editor)  A persistent question amongst Arab thinkers simply stated is this: What does the future hold for culture in our land? If we think about it, the word "culture" holds multiple meanings for each of us. For that reason, I should begin with a …