Future TV to get new look, add all-news channel
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by MEB Journal staff
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 Lebanon-based satellite channel Future TV is planning to re-launch itself in early 2007 to reclaim its identity as primarily an entertainment channel. It has also divulged plans to launch a 24-hour all-news channel.
The re-launch will identify Future as “the channel of empowerment and optimism,” said its chairman, Nadim Munla.
The new 24-hour news station is expected to begin broadcasting in the first quarter of 2007, and will focus primarily on Lebanon as well as report on regional and international news. “This will serve our audience that is interested in these developments,” said Munla. “But we will also relaunch our main station to emphasize our desire to continue as a general entertainment channel.”
Future, which is closely identified with Lebanon’s March 14 pro-government political movement, has devoted large amounts of time to political and news programming since the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Munla described the shift as necessary but said that it gave Future’s audience the impression “that we were shifting into news and current affairs, and away from entertainment.”
The entertainment station’s prime-time programming will take its lead from Future’s premiere property, the talent competition Superstar, which Munla said “embodies our focus on empowerment and optimism.” It will focus on original and licensed reality shows, including existing shows Beauty Clinic and Project Fashion Season 2, and new shows Dragon’s Den (where young businessmen pitch their ideas to a panel of investors) and The Cut (another design program).
However, Future will enter its new phase of optimism without General Manager Tarek Ayntrazi, who resigned in mid-November 2006, just one year after being recruited. Ayntrazi, who was hired from Starcom’s Media Buying Unit, “did not fit in with Future’s culture,” said Munla. Asked about reports that Ayntrazi would remain as a consultant elsewhere in the Hariri Group, which owns Future TV, Munla said that Ayntrazi was “in a period of transition.”
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