In 2001, she joined Egyptian private channel Dream TV as vice president, in addition to host of two talk shows. She left in a storm of controversy in 2003 and joined Rotana, where she was named last June as head of the Saudi-owned network’s cinema production division, while she continues to broadcast a weekly show. Sarhan, who started out as a radio presenter in the 1970s and worked in TV, radio and print journalism through the 1980s, has won both admirers and enemies for her outspoken style and willingness to raise critical issues, both about Arab society and about the Arab media and cinema.

She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Drama from Louisville University in Kentucky and a PhD in Drama from George Washington University in Washington DC.

What was it like when you started on your ART talk show in the 1990s?
At the time, I was working on Kul an Nass magazine with my ex-husband, and our partner, Sheikh Saleh Kamel, asked me to join him as a consultant in a new project called ART. He asked me, “This is the first time we have pay-TV in the Middle East – what can we do to encourage people to pay money?”
I told him that the only thing to make them pay is to bring them whatever they don’t have on government TV, and that was credibility. We needed to bring credibility to the screen, and bring people’s thoughts from their minds and hearts. We would bring normal people to discuss social problems, politics, religion – everything they don’t discuss on government TV. That idea came from my ‘American heritage,’ from the years that I lived and studied in America.
When Arabic TV started in the 1960s, we had talk shows, but then they disappeared. So this was the first talk show in 30 years.

I wasn’t thinking of hosting. We talked to many presenters, and finally, Sheikh Saleh told me, “We don’t have anybody. You are the only one – present a couple of episodes and then we’ll bring somebody in.” I started and it was like a revolution.
From the first episode, it was open TV – a new thing in the Middle East. From the first program it was the talk of the Arab World.
I was credible and honest, and I got normal people to talk about their problems in life, and the show was a big success. But because I touched on taboos and crossed red lines, it started to be attacked – people weren’t used to this openness. They were used to fake TV. The show changed the history of the media.

Do you feel that with all the competition nowadays, these issues are being covered adequately in the Arab media?
Of course there is no comparison, after 11, 12 years. Now, I see presenters doing the same issues I handled years ago, and I’m very happy that people are handling these subjects, and that no one is upset that they’re handling these subjects. There’s more freedom. We have problems with our governments, with elections, but there’s a lot of freedom.
Still, we have a long way to go, and I feel like we’re going backwards, with all the religious hysteria and extremism there is now. I am being attacked more and more by religious extremists, more than before.
Censorship is not from the government or the political power any more – it’s coming from inside, from the people themselves. Because they’re frustrated economically and politically, people go to extremist religion, and hang on trivial religious issues. They create their own McCarthyism of the people.
They’re trying to veil the media – not only to put a veil on my head, but to force the presenter and the viewer to put a veil on their minds.
I never worry about government oppression, because there are limits to it. The political power cannot really cut your tongue. What can really cut your tongue are these fake social values.

But when you left Dream TV in 2003, you were forced out by government pressure.
Sure, but look how the government handled it. At that time, [Egyptian journalist] Mohamed Hassanein Heikal gave a lecture at the American University in Cairo, talking about the future of Egypt and whether Mr. Mubarak would make his son inherit the presidency or not. This was the first time that anyone raised this subject. When I aired this lecture on Dream TV, it wasn’t the president himself, but there were some elements who were thinking, how could they ‘assassinate’ someone like me? They didn’t want to make me appear as a victim because I had dared to put this lecture on the air. So they created a false battle, saying “Oh, she was talking about masturbation on TV, she is corrupting our kids.” They changed the story into a masturbation story, so they could attack me on a social basis.

You were recently promoted from head of the Rotana cinema channel to head of production for the cinema division. What does that move imply?
I started with Rotana on the music channel – and it was the first open [free-to-air] TV music channel, and then with the cinema channel, which was the first open free TV movie channel. Rotana has grown to seven channels, including Al Risala, and we decided we needed to have a big share in movie production. We created the new Rotana studios, and I was promoted to work on the cinema industry.
It’s easy to run the channel now, because we have a very strong base to build on. Now we need to provide the channels in the Arab World with good Arabic movies. We are going to produce the biggest share in the market of Arabic movies. We plan to produce two thirds of the market.

If you look back to the 1950s and 1960s, people saw Cairo as a sort of Hollywood of the East. Can the Arab cinema get back to that?
When we started the Rotana cinema channel two and a half years ago, there were 12 new movies per year in the market. We came on the air and started bringing new movies on the screen, and there was a euphoric response. Rotana is the first channel ever to compete with terrestrial TV in Egypt.
There are 77 million people who can watch terrestrial TV and only 30 million with satellite hook-ups [in Egypt], so for a satellite channel to match terrestrial TV’s audience, that’s really something. Other channels started to think, “Let’s put movies on.” And we were able to sell to them, because we have the biggest classic Arabic movie library in the Middle East. But we have to have new titles as well, so we started to acquire from the market and to produce. It was as if you threw a stone into a still lake – waves started to come up. People started to produce more, and new movie channels opened.
I said before there were 12 new Arabic movies in 2004. In 2006, the number reached 30, and in 2007 it will be 45.

So there’s been more quantity. Have you seen a difference in quality?
In the last 10 years, comedy and farce ruled – you couldn’t make a movie unless you included all this vaudeville stuff. People are suffering, the thought was, and they want something to laugh about. Now, you see serious movies coming out. We produced a good movie about terrorism called Dem Al Ghazal (Blood of the Gazelle) – and The Yacoubian Building, which we didn’t produce, has also been getting a lot of attention. We made the first-ever Saudi movie, Keif el Hal, produced with Saudi actors, about a Saudi family and Saudi life.
Comedy still exists, but it’s retreating – people are making other genres: suspense, action, social [dramas], and approaching daring subjects. There was a movie last year, about a bunch of young kids. It was a cheap, low-budget independent movie, but it succeeded because the kids saw that this was their life.
And I think that this kind of work touches people more than political reformers. Prince Al Waleed, with music and movies and Al Risala – a very moderate religious channel – has achieved more to touch the masses than political powers, rulers, or kings. Music, cinema and art in general are more effective than any political speech.

These productions – are you aiming more for theatrical releases, or do you see them more as supplying the TV channel?
We’re aiming for theatrical releases, for TV, for the Internet, whatever.

Are DVD sales a part of that?
We already have about 40 titles on DVD – it’s a whole studio project. We don’t work just to create movies for our channels. We supply movies to 25 channels around the Arab World.

With Rotana signing deals with distributors in the US and Europe, how are you approaching marketing to an expatriate Arab population?
We have to reach out to them exactly like the Arab citizens in the Middle East, and appeal to their nostalgia. Spanish or Italian Americans hold on to their own culture and language. People don’t have to give up their heritage, and this is a way to create a bridge.
With all the choices on TV, you can get your own point of view, not just that of the West. When I lived in America, I hardly spoke Arabic for years. I was really cut off, and of course I felt nostalgic.

How hard was it to be a woman doing these things? How much of a man’s world is it at the top of Arab media?
Thank God, the support of my viewers is the main thing that has helped. It was – and still is – extremely tough to be a woman doing these things because I have touched on very sensitive and taboo subjects.
It is society as a whole – not just the media – that is a man’s world. The media has had a lot of women involved. In Egypt, since radio started, 70 percent of the media professionals have
been women.
It wasn’t difficult to be a woman in the media. It was very difficult to be Hala in the media, to be getting into taboo subjects, to be daring in changing the style of presentation and the style of handling things. It was not accepted from a woman and will never be accepted from a woman. What I handled ten years ago, if a man does it today, he will be applauded – it won’t be “How dare you raise an issue like that?”