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Democratizing The Arab Screen
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by Nour Malas
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Arab television has been pulled out of the hands of government officials and seized in the tight grip of a few big business moguls, who seem to control television ratings and direct industry trends from inside executive boardrooms. With little or no research and limited understanding of how to improve their performance, some of these broadcasters acquire Western programs, copy ideas from abroad, and insist that only scantily-clad dancing girls and foreign pop culture can raise ratings. What does the Arab viewer really want to watch?
A CLUTTERED MARKET
“The sex episode” – as it has come to be known – raked in the biggest number of viewers in Arab television history, says Houda Koussa, media research consultant and managing director of Dubai-based Archers brand and research consultancy. “Zaven tapped into the Arab thirst to know – to educate,” observes Koussa. She points to Zahi Wehbe’s show Khalik Bil Beit, also on Future TV, and MBC’s Kalam Nawaem as programs that cater to the desires of Arab viewers. These programs “edutain” – they simultaneously educate and entertain the audience. Edutainment is a new genre in Arab television programming. Content to let braver souls take the first risk, once they see a new concept rise to success, programming executives leap into overdrive. That becomes the idea they all want to copy. Programs are imported from the U.S. or Europe and tweaked for “cultural sensitivities.” Those that succeed are quickly replicated, with minor changes in production. Eyeing the success of Future TV’s Superstar – the Arabic-language American Idol – LBC drew up Star Academy, MBC created Album,
 and New TV threw in Star Club. “The new generation wants bold and daring,” says Koussa, insisting that viewers are tired of the same faces and concepts popping up on channels everywhere. “Bold and daring,” she insists, does not simply mean bare bellies and uncensored Hollywood hits. In fact, she believes that imported pop culture is becoming less interesting to viewers – and they don’t lust for local versions, either “Haifa no longer drives in the ratings,” says Koussa, referring to Lebanon’s pop starlet Haifa Wehbe. Koussa believes the industry consensus on light entertainment has been shaken. Instead, replication in the market has now resulted in a new trend in Arab broadcasting – specialization. For example, the cooking channel Fatafeat, which was reportedly on the verge of collapse last year, is still on the air and draws in a large female audience. A new channel on Nilesat, Assayel, is dedicated to horse grooming and racing. Al Hayat newspaper reports that there is a new channel in the works that is supposed to be dedicated to the poor – airing programs targeted at those living below the poverty line – presented and produced exclusively by poor people. The idea is meant as a response to the rise of business channels and financial reporting. Whether the channel will make it on the air is still speculation, but it captures the changing face of broadcasting. “It’s a cluttered media environment,” admits Koussa. Indeed, as the number of free-to-air channels approaches 400, the giants of the Arab screen cannot claim the viewer loyalty they used to. With a channel for every taste – and tastes for various channels – the industry is baffled by viewers who are “literally not interested in anything,” says Koussa. “Today’s viewer is an expert at zipping and zapping through the channels. They will tell you that they watched TV last night, but they won’t be able to tell you what they watched.” Zaven acknowledges this change, suggt gesting that the big question in the market today is how to sustain viewership in the face of so many options. “Instead of being one option out of ten programs on Monday night, I’m now an option out of 500 – and that includes competing with the best Tom Cruise hit,” he laments. And if a satellite viewer were to zip through all the channels he or she has available – watching each for less than a minute – it would take over three hours to make a full round. [And that’s for only 180 channels – Editor] “By the time they get back to Sire Wenfatahit,” concedes Zaven, “it would be long over.”
WHO’S IN CONTROL?
The challenge is to engage the viewer, say analysts, and specialized channels are one way to appeal to individual consumers. “Stations were kings; it was like a monopoly,” says Koussa. “Now, with the number of channels,» he says, «the viewer has become king.” If that’s true, the big networks have a way to go in meeting the demand for creative content that caters to social changes and new lifestyle trends. Saudi Arabia’s domination of the market presents one of the biggest challenges. Koussa has worked on at least thirty research projects in the Kingdom, and she has found that Saudi women are a core target market for television – if television producers can come to understand their changing needs. “Over the past two years, Saudi women have really found their voices,” she says. “They are starting to question their reality.” While most women accept that they must wear the hijab, for example, they’re starting to question why it has to be black, or why they are forbidden from driving cars. “If you weren’t following this trend,” says Koussa, “you would still think that these women want to watch fashion – and commercials comparing types of cooking oil.” And with the average Saudi female spending 1.5 hours per day surfing the Internet, new media paradigms are making their way into the market. [It’s the confluence of television and the Internet for which we must prepare – Editor]. Media and sales executives are having a hard time swallowing these changes, says Koussa. “They don’t want to admit that television isn’t as effective anymore in reaching to the very core of the viewer.” She believes that lack of good research – and ignorance of its importance – is preventing Arab channels from finding and effectively pursuing these target groups. There’s also the matter of ego at the level  of top executives, who insist they know what people want to watch. Instead of doing research, these decision makers make assumptions. Ego, in fact, is what Koussa believes actually keeps most of the region’s channels on the air, given that few of them ever turn a profit. MBC broke even last year, after more than ten years of loss. Paul Boulos, LBC’s Senior Marketing Manager, believes the solution might be in treating television less like a random force of nature – and more like a brand. “People in television don’t usually understand the factors involved in research,” says Boulous, listing three key tenets: understanding your brand, understanding the consumer, and understanding the market. “Brand perception” and “brand tracking” studies quantitatively measure the brand in the market against the competition. For television, this means defining a purpose for the program or channel – against what is already available. Agencies usually deliver cookie-cutter solutions, says Boulos, which is why he thinks independent media consultants are more effective. Understanding the market, or “industry dynamics,” is a large-scale venture he believes that only research organizations can carry out. The Arab Advisors Group fulfills this role in the region, following by the Pan Arab Research Center (PARC), and IPSOS. PARC and IPSOS also conduct audience ratings. The real gap in research is in understanding the consumer, the viewer – the king. Boulous says this requires “a re-socialization of the entire industry.” Psycho-social research of the Arab viewer is as important as demographic research, if not more, insists Koussa. It segments the target market beyond demographics, replacing standard categories with ones Koussa believes are more reflective of the viewer’s needs. Viewers are no longer broken down into male versus female, or one age bracket versus another. Channels can target “achievers” versus “pleasure-seekers.” And, she adds, “the interesting part of this research is that it survives for over two years.” But few channels use this type of research, and Arab culture is not yet a research culture, say industry professionals. Meanwhile, millions of dollars are invested in programs that flop. Perhaps a simple concept test or program test could better predict chances of success. Boulos thinks so. “Somebody has to shout out loud, now,” he says, for the TV industry “to get its act together.” Industry executives have no other choice, insists Boulos, as “the consequences will be missed opportunities – and failure.” RESEARCH AND THE RATINGS GAME Not everyone needs convincing. MBC spent about $500,000 on audience research between 2003 and 2005. The budget in big networks can reach $1 million. Smaller channels budget in research minimally, starting at about $200,000 and upping the investment as they see “results that make sense,” says Koussa. She admits that the quality of syndicated research has improved, “but it’s still not very advanced.” One challenge is viewer skepticism. “There’s no trust in research,” says Koussa. When asked to participate in audience monitoring, viewers often want to know just how this information will be used. And they cite confidentiality issues when asked about their lifestyle habits. Even when they cooperate, Boulous points to the typical technology lag in the computer system used to process ratings. “It takes time, and ratings come in after a month sometimes,” he says, “whereas in the U.S., they know how a program is doing minute-by-minute.” The core problem of syndicated research, however, is the  prevalent industry belief that the numbers are not to be trusted. “There is a perception in the market that the data is toiled with,” says Koussa. “They say that people have played with the numbers.” This can be done, for example, by choosing to track only a specific age range, which skews viewership ratings. “There’s a conflict of interest in research companies,” says Boulos, as these companies are sometimes run by executives who own television stations. “It’s like real 1930s Al Capone stuff,” he says. Pierre Choueiri, director of the region’s leading media marketing group, is also a stakeholder in various television channels. No one would accuse the Choueiri Group of wrongdoing, but the appearance of a vested interest in the outcome of “impartial fact-finding” can damage the reputation of all
research firms. Are audience surveys free and democratic? Impartial accuracy is paramount and replication of objective results is essential to real science. So what are we to make of the precipitous drop in ratings of Al Jazeera immediately after it switched from the Choueiri Group to another ratings agency? Al Jazeera didn’t suddenly change – so why did the rating numbers? In other words, if I buy my new measuring stick from IPSOS or PARC, does that actually change  the physical size of my widescreen TV? For that matter, a program should not jump from a distant fourth place to first in the ratings simply because a new agency is using proprietary “in-house science” to measure their client’s audience. [A true democracy depends on voter
tallies staying the same – no matter who is counting the ballots – Editor]. Until this discrepancy is solved, ratings will remain permanently suspect. In 2004, five of the region’s largest media agencies came together in a research group to produce the first “independent” television ratings. The group included two field agencies, a third agency to audit, and an international agency to audit the auditor. The result was outrage. Measurements revealed that primetime ratings were simply mediocre – at a time when the industry’s leaders insisted that primetime viewership was enjoying an exuberant success at 70%. “That just wasn’t the case,” says Koussa. It was definitely not what Middle East TV executives wanted to hear, and the group’s research was quickly sidelined. An independent “people meter,” planned by a group of advertisers and networks for completion this year, is supposed to help validate ratings promises [see page 9 of this issue]. But it is also likely to be subject to the politics of its backers. “Releasing a people meter will make a lot of stations’ shows rise to the front that are not now,” says Koussa. But an accurate people meter may also capture passive viewership, which could serve to quantify the incessant “channel-hopping” phenomenon that has come to characterize viewing behavior. In the United States, there is fear that instant voting may not give new shows enough time to cozy up to the viewer. Could this take “instant democracy” too far? Meanwhile, the current ratings system “is our only medium of measurement,” insists Zaven Kouyoumdjian, “so we need to use it.” An informal ratings system exists on Zaven’s website, where he hosts an annual online survey that probes people’s viewing tastes. The survey is conducted year-round and garners thousands of responses, but results are actually tabulated only during the Ramadan sweeps.Viewers who watch Oprah and Dr. Phil also watch Zaven, putting Lebanon’s most popular talkshow host in the same category as America’s highest-earning television personality, Oprah Winfrey. In fact, says Zaven, “the amazing finding of this survey is the extent of penetration of American talk shows.” A notable result from Zaven’s 2007 year-end survey is the declining popularity of political talkshows and programs. People seem to prefer their politics in hard-news format, minus the editorial interjections. These preferences often go unnoticed, and may account for fluctuations in the performance of a channel.
DOES EMPATHY SELL BETTER THAN SEX?
 In a world where fully half the global Inter net revenue comes from lascivious sites, and many say they are looking forward to sex in the afterlife, how important is sex on TV? The answer in the Middle East, once again, seems to be in “specialization.” Egyptian satellite channel Al Mehwar took a bold step when it started broadcasting Dr. Heba Kotb every Saturday night at 11 :30 pm. Dr. Kotb hosts a talkshow about sex – a jarring concept at first glance, given that she is veiled. But Dr. Kotb hosts religious experts and takes call from viewers to give Arab viewers the “sex education” they don’t get at school. Zahi Wehbe argues that television should not act as an educational tool in itself. “TV should not be an alternative for a lack,” says Wehbe. “We need to have a normal, functioning society; a civil society, first.” Democratizing the Arab screen, it seems, will only be ushered in by a democratizing of the Arab world. Amr Khaled, the Muslim version of a televangelist, is another example. Described by Time magazine as “an accountant by training who favors Hugo Boss shirts and designer suits,” Khaled hosts a show on the religious channel Iqra’ in which he preaches modern lifestyle prescriptions to Muslims. His website got 26 million hits last year, and he tours the region giving lectures on lifestyles. “There is huge demand for this type of religious programming,” says Koussa. “People want an educational know-how of religion in today’s world. Television is a way to expand their horizons.”
 Good television is not foreign to the Arab eye, with a number of programs targeting universal values and reaping success. “The Oprah approach is universal,” says Koussa. “It’s about the popular host who becomes a star, relating to the viewers and helping them out.” Koussa also points to Zahi Wehbe as “the most respected presenter in the region” for his humanity and compasssion – qualities that easily come through the TV screen. “People like to watch other people that they can relate to,” Wehbe told the MEB Journal. Likewise, MBC’s Kalam Nawaem is successful, says Koussa, because it “taps into the core of the human experience.” If TV stations are after superior ratings, reliable research is essential. An increasing number of industry professionals believe that accurate testing should be the prerequisite to the introduction of any new program, To better determine viewer preferences, a rigorous ratings system is well overdue. Tapping into the audience’s psyche might also help. This will save the stations from considerable financial losses – and the viewers from bad programs. It is best if this transitional phase from bad practices into better standards doesn’t take long. It seems that most Arab viewers know exactly what they want and we are just waiting for TV professionals to realize that.
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