Takhayel launches Arab spin on MuchMusic, Food Network
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 In launching two new TV stations, food channel Fatafeat and music broadcaster Muchmusic Arabyeah!, Takhayel Entertainment’s Youssef El-Deeb has kept close to tested formulas. “We don’t want to reinvent the wheel,” he said. “We’re looking to create niche television based on models that have been successful elsewhere.”
In January, the Dubai-based production house began broadcasting Fatafeat, based closely on the US-based Food Network, and also acquired the MuchMusic license from the Canadian music broadcaster. The two launches came months after Takhayel aborted a plan to convert Lebanese broadcaster NBN to the Canadian-owned format, CityTV.
MuchMusic Arabyeah! (pronounced “Arabiya”) celebrated its opening with a series of celebrity promos, including Paris Hilton. For its first month, it ran Western music introduced by Arabic-speaking VJs, expanding in February with a lineup of entertainment programs.
Despite the large number of music stations on the air, El-Deeb, formerly the general manager of MBC1, still sees an opportunity to find acts that are outside of the mainstream Arabic music market.
“The way the music market works in the Middle East, record sales don’t drive revenues – they come mostly from events, like concerts, and a lot of them from private events and weddings. I won’t say it’s all the same, but it’s all within the same range.”
MuchMusic, working through talent scouts, plans to release music under its own label in coordination with other major labels. The station’s eventual goal is to broadcast 35 percent Arabic music.
Fatafeat also relies on imported programming, mainly subtitled shows from US-based Food Network. Original programs include Akel Abbas al Serriya, a tour of down-to-earth restaurants around the region, and Samar Five Stars, a high cuisine cooking show. El-Deeb again hopes to show 35 to 40 percent locally-produced shows, especially during the cooking-intensive month of Ramadan, but only when “they can stand side-by-side with the Western programs. We don’t want to have cooking shows that look like chemistry sets.”
But it hasn’t been all smooth sailing for Takhayel. The production house’s first TV project, which started last July, was to make over the long-time Lebanese broadcaster NBN in a format pioneered by Toronto’s CityTV, featuring entertainment and locally-oriented news such as reports on traffic, airport delays, and local prices. The new format launched on July 12 with Bonjour Beirut, a 2-hour morning show, as well as other shows that were in production, 48 hours before the war began in Lebanon last summer.
“Once the war started,” said El-Deeb, “NBN reverted quickly back to a political station, reporting on the war and what was going on. Being only 2 days old, we were not geared to that quick switch.”
Following the war, the station kept the CityTV format through Ramadan, but afterwards, said El-Deeb, “We thought that for the next few months [in Lebanon] it would all be serious, political news, so we pulled the City brand and franchise and said, ‘Let’s see what happens next.’ And it hasn’t been getting better.” Takhayel is now planning on rolling out the CityTV brand in Egypt and the Gulf, but these plans are still at a very early stage.
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