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In 1995, TBS senior
editor and publisher S. Abdallah Schleifer presented two substantially
similar papers at two different conferences a week apart--the
Broadcast Education Association convention in Las Vegas and
the 12th Annual Symposium of the Center for Contemporary Arab
Studies (CCAS), devoted that year to "The Information Revolution
in the Arab World." Though neither was published, Hussein
Amin, who was present at both conferences, quoted from the papers
in some of his own subsequently published research. Since the
papers deal in detail with Arab satellites at a time when TBS
had not yet begun to publish (albeit it was at these two conferences
that the idea of TBS emerged from discussions with colleagues
such as Dr. Douglas Boyd and Prof. Leo Gher) and at a time when
there was little documentation of this rapidly developing field,
the editors of TBS have decided to reproduce a combined version
of the two papers under the title "MMDS and the New Satellite
Television Technologies: A Media Explosion in the Arab World."
Such radical changes
have taken place in the region since this paper was written
that a number of the then seemingly important developments that
it documents have subsequently collapsed, such as the Orbit-financed
BBC World Arab TV channel and the lavishly funded efforts to
create a vast MMDS (wireless cable) system in Saudi Arabia.
Schleifer notes
that the paper's then accurate characterization of Orbit programming
predates the shift by Orbit to increasingly Arabic-language
culturally relevant programming and the corresponding drastic
reduction of cost for an Orbit subscription and decoder. This
paper also predates the shift by the MBC Group from its Battersea
headquarters to Dubai and its evolution into a Group with the
development in Dubai of MBC 2, the Al-Arabiya channel, and the
03 Documentary production and acquisition company. Finally the
paper predates the relative failure of the "Cultural Sovereignty
Theory" which predicted that local Arabic programming would
provide culturally acceptable alternatives to licentious Western
productions.
The Editors.
By
S. Abdallah Schleifer, TBS Publisher and Senior Editor
The first major impact
of new satellite technologies upon Arab media was in the eighties,
not the nineties, and it took the shape of newspaper, rather
than television, transmission via satellite. First Asharq
al-Awsat newspaper and then Al-Hayat began daily
satellite transmission from London to major population centers
through the Arab world. Although owned by private Saudi interests,
these papers did then and still do address themselves to a pan-Arab
audience, and their staff, editors, and columnists reflect that
sense of a pan-Arab audience. At the time I was struck by the
irony that it in the end it was wealth generated in a conservative
Arab country and the technology acquired by that wealth that
had brought about a pan-Arab press, and not radical Arab Nationalist
ideology.
Not that satellite technology capable of moving television signals
did not already exist: by the mid-eighties an Arab states satellite
system--Arabsat--was operative. Despite the existence of technology
powerful enough to transmit signals that could be picked up
even by the relatively small dishes of those days, there was
no attempt at that time to use the Arabsat satellites as direct
broadcasting satellites providing Direct Broadcast Service (DBS)
either to cable companies re-transmitting the programming or
as Direct to Home (DTH) services to the small but slowly growing
number of homes (particularly in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf)
with dishes.
Instead Arabsat satellites were used in this initial phase for
news and public affairs exchanges between existing Arab state-owned
national television stations, and this sort of exchange had
minimal impact. The news programs of all Arab national television
stations reflected, to put it politely, information values or
PR values rather than intrinsically journalistic values.
Unlike much of the
Arab press, which enjoyed at least a formative development as
privately owned newspapers that functioned within the context
of some sort of journalistic tradition, all Arab television,
be the prevailing state systems left wing or right wing, market
economies or socialist economies, republics or monarchies, were
state owned and more than any other media the national television
channels were extensions of the ministries of information. It
is no coincidence that in many Arab countries the minister of
information ran his ministry from the national television station
building.
So I would suggest that if local news, which is precisely what
was exchanged, had little in the way of intrinsic journalistic
interest, the only thing that made it interesting was that it
was local. Perhaps the visit of a minister to inaugurate a chicken
farm is not terribly interesting but since there is nothing
else to watch and at least it is our minister and our chicken
farm, we watch it. But who wants to watch some other country's
minister visiting some other country's chicken farm?
And because of the high degree of official political considerations
governing the national television channels even the exchange
programs were limited--in a world of shifting political alliances
and sensitivities--by the hesitation over putting the programming
of another country onto one's own national channel. It is no
coincidence that the first news and documentary program exchanges
that I ever saw on Egyptian television were with the Sultanate
of Oman, which was one Arab state that did not break relations
with Egypt either when it entered into negotiations with Israel
or later signed a peace treaty and was expelled from the Arab
League.
The very absence of Egypt which with its vast manpower resources
for broadcast production, in entertainment and in journalism,
and its film industry, as well as its radio stations and television
channels, and overwhelmingly dominant role in providing TV programming
to the rest of the Arab World, was also an inhibiting force
until 1988 when Egypt returned to the Arab League.
Then in the late eighties and early nineties two separate events
converged to force the pace of what we now consider to be a
veritable satellite-driven television media explosion in the
Arab world.
The first was the availability for the small but rapidly growing
number of dish owners of CNN International. CNN international's
signals in the mid-eighties were more or less limited to Europe
and it was a broadcasting venture whose original sense of itself
was as a specialized service for hotels servicing international
businessmen. But by the late eighties CNN had begun to transmit
via a shaky Soviet satellite that happened to have a footprint
that covered the Arab world. Many of the highest ranking government
officials in the Arab world began to watch CNN with their own
dishes. Later, as the Russian satellite continued to drift,
CNN would move onto Arabsat, while the signal from the satellites
it used for Europe would increase in strength.
By the fall of 1989 it was known among both political and broadcasting
circles in the Arab World that CNN and Egypt were moving slowly,
painfully, and inevitably to a deal whereby CNN would be rebroadcast
terrestrially--which means like a regular TV channel-available
to the public for the first time in the Arab world on a Pay-TV
platform to be known as CNE, which originally stood for Cable
News Egypt (as additional channels were added to this Pay TV
platform, the name was eventually altered to Cable Network Egypt.)
Now this all seems very common place today but the excitement
and concern at the time that there would be uncensored, unrestricted
24-hour news produced by an international news organization
owned by an American media mogul was incredible. But the fact
was that this service would be in English and would be encoded
and for both these reasons available only to small portion of
the actual TV audience in Egypt.
In June 1990, the Egyptian investment authority finally approved
the formation of CNE to rebroadcast CNN, The idea of direct
broadcasting even if for terrestrial re-transmission was in
the air. Then a little more than a month later Iraq invaded
Kuwait.
That was the other event.
Shortly before the Gulf crisis the Egyptian government legalized
the import and ownership of dishes. And in Saudi Arabia and
the Gulf, local companies were beginning to manufacture local
dishes to compete with imports for the rapidly growing market.
These expanding markets were further stimulated by the Gulf
crisis.
Through the fall of 1990, Egyptian and other Arab forces serving
in Saudi Arabia as part of the Alliance were subject to intensive
psychological warfare by Radio Baghdad (as were the civilian
populations of all the Arab countries). But in December 1990
Egypt TV, formally known as the Egyptian Radio & Television
Union (ERTU) leased a powerful direct broadcasting transponder
and on December 13, one month before the air war portion of
Desert Storm would begin, the Egyptian Space Net (ESN) began
to broadcast 13 hours of daily programming culled from its two
domestic channels.
Dishes and both transmitters were installed in the forward areas
of Saudi Arabia where Egyptian forces-the largest contingent
of Arab troops serving in the Alliance-were based so that ESN
with its heavy diet of pro-Alliance and anti-Iraqi news and
public affairs programming, as well as entertainment, could
be seen on ordinary TV sets by Egyptian forces as well as by
nearby Saudi population centers. Since the war incidentally,
ESN has taken a position on a still stronger European satellite
and quickly achieved a significant audience throughout the Gulf
because of the popularity of Egyptian movies and serials.
But back to the Gulf Crisis. By the time the air war had begun
in mid-January, both Egyptian TV and Saudi TV had begun to broadcast
CNN directly to their large domestic audiences.
In Egypt the transmission was provided as a direct free (as
well as uncensored) service since CNE's newly established management
was not yet ready to take subscriptions. In Saudi Arabia CNN
was taped, and then, after censorship, rebroadcast several hours
after initial satellite transmission. These two different approaches
suggest the eventual divergence of the Saudi and Egyptian approach
to the reception of international satellite broadcasting.
In the years that have followed the Gulf War, dish ownership
was further stimulated by the increasing amount of international
programming available as satellites increased in power and range,
as the cost of dishes continued to decline, and as the number
of companies marketing, servicing, and even manufacturing dishes
tremendously increased.
This trend was dramatically accelerated by the appearance of
three privately owned Arab satellite television broadcasting
systems, all three of which are owned by Saudi Arabian business
interests and all three of which enjoy, to greater or lesser
degrees, linkage to members of the Royal Family.
The first of these satellite systems is MBC-the Middle East
Broadcasting Center-which began transmission in September 1991.
MBC is an Arab version of an American or European commercial
channel. It broadcasts 14 hours a day providing a mix of news
and public affairs programming, along with sports, fashion,
movies, and other entertainment. Its format and style is very
professional, sophisticated, and fast paced compared to the
various Arab national channels but it stays within broadly defined
Arab standards of decorum and decency both in its entertainment
and public affairs programming. It has attracted considerable
up-market advertising to the Egyptian Satellite. MBC is transmitted
and largely produced from London and its staff is an interesting
blend of British administrators and technicians, an Arab higher
management, Arab directors, writers, producers, and quite elegant
Arab on-camera talent.
The second private Arab satellite system is ART-Arab Radio and
Television-established by Sheikh Saleh Kamal, one of the original
partners in MBC. ART has pioneered in the Arab world the global
trend to specialization broadcasting. It began transmission
from Fucino, Italy via Arabsat in January 1994, providing four
channels--a movie channel, a sports channel, a general or variety
channel and a children's channel. These channels now broadcast
24 hours a day. Aside from live and syndicated sports coverage
most ART production originates in Cairo but programs are also
being produced for ART in Riyadh, Tunis, and Jordan.
To the degree that ART relies on live and syndicated coverage,
as in the case of sports, or its impressive film library, it
has quickly acquired a very large following, particularly since
it has not yet encrypted its signal.
Its General or Variety channel--dominated by entertainment but
with occasional public affairs and business programming and
considerable religious and Arab heritage programming--reminds
one of the format, style, and tone of the national channels,
particularly of Egypt TV.
Of particular interest is the ART almost no-news policy-"almost"
because ART does broadcast business news. ART sources have suggested
several reasons why ART avoids providing news bulletins. One
is that news, particularly if it is produced conscientiously
by one's own staff of Arabic-speaking TV journalists and by
one's own overseas bureaus, as in the case of MBC, is expensive.
Secondly, news bulletins, if they are independent and touch
on sensitive issues, risk stirring up official wrath and potential
sanctions (like forbidding the sale of decoders where dishes
are legal, or being kept off wireless cable systems where dishes
are not legal).
The most recent Arab satellite system is ORBIT, launched on
May 1994. Orbit is able to deliver 16 television channels in
its package because it employs digital signals and video compression
technology similar to that employed on the DBS/DTH satellite
services in America. It transmits from Rome. Unlike MBC and
ART, Orbit is already encoded-and in addition to its subscription
charge, subscribers must buy a particularly expensive decoder
that was initially sold for US $10,000 and now sells for US
$5,000.
Orbit's ability to enter the Egyptian market is not so much
limited by its price (Egypt does have an extraordinary number
of millionaires, both Egyptian and other Arab, in residence)
as by the ban in Egypt on the sale of any decoders but those
sold by CNE which for the time being gives CNE a monopoly in
the Pay-TV business. In Saudi Arabia, the sale and manufacture
of dishes have been banned for the past year. Orbit has some
subscribers among the many dish owners who set up before the
ban, but the ban has definitely crimped Orbit's opportunity
to expand in the Kingdom.
The rest of the Orbit package consists of an all-news channel
assembled from the major American networks along with the CNN
international channel, Discovery, Music Now channel (with mostly
Western pop music), C-span, the Hollywood Channel which is largely
an Entertainment Today type of channel, a Super Movie Channel
(for Western movies) and its own Orbit-produced channels for
Arabic movies, and General Varieties. The Orbit product is slick
but much of it seems rather irrelevant to an Arabic-speaking
audience, and to Arab cultural values.
Orbit has commissioned the BBC to produce a BBC Arab-world television
service which is offered, encrypted or encoded, exclusively
in the Orbit package. The comparison between BBC Arabic TV News
and MBC's news product is instructive.
Like the rest of the Orbit operation, the BBC channel is at
the cutting edge of technology. BBC Arabic TV is not only digital
and video compressed, it is also edited almost entirely on non-linear
edit packs. That means basically that news stories are now edited
with material loaded into a hard disc and then edited or cut
by an editor operating a computer. In comparison to videotape
editing, the potential for rapidly calling up library material
and the ability to instantly edit in picture at any point in
the television report without having to move tape back and forth
or do entire story re-edits is extraordinary. Increasingly,
reporters will have the potential to edit their own stories
and editors will have to develop reporting skills to survive.
The economies that could be achieved by the switch to non-linear
editing-by reducing editing time and combining two different
staff functions - could be tremendous. Non-linear editing is
clearly the future of television in general and most obviously
and most imminently of television journalism in particular.
When the BBC Arabic TV Service began last June it went from
two hours to four, then six, and now eight hours. The goal was
for a 24-hour service but it is now fixed at ten hours a day.
During its transmission, BBC broadcasts a half-hour news bulletin
on the hour and fills the rest of the hour with BBC English-language
documentaries and public affairs programming that lends itself
to Arabic voice over.
Indeed the BBC Arabic TV service relies heavily on the BBC's
English-language TV reporters (whose work is then voiced over)
for many of their field reports. But some of its reporting is
done using BBC Arabic Radio correspondents who are already in
the field. They know Arabic but they do not necessarily know
how to do television news. Right now BBC Arabic TV has only
three Arabic producer-reporters of their own in the field plus
the occasional special Arabic public affairs programming, such
as Min Washington (From Washington), which is produced in Washington
D.C., commissioned directly by Orbit and turned over for transmission
to the BBC.
In contrast MBC now staffs seven bureaus with its own growing
cadre of Arab TV producer-reporters in Cairo, Brussels, Jerusalem,
Tunis, Amman, and Washington D.C.
MBC reporting is unique in that in contrast to the news programming
of the national Arab channels, MBC follows the international
format in which news worthiness rather than government press
releases determines the line-up and in which news stories-by
field reports or studio voice-overs-are scripted to picture
rather than an anchor reading wire copy that at best approximates
the overall content of the available video.
But MBC's style is also unique because in common with the BBC
Arabic Service, MBC retains the more cautious approach to confrontational
journalism that not only characterized the Arab media when dealing
with its own or friendly governments, but which in principle
(rather than opportunistically as in the case of the Arab world)
characterized the quality press in America and England less
than fifty years ago, a quality press that then took pride in
the fact that it printed "only the news that's fit to print."
This lends, whatever the origin or intention, a certain dignity
to MBC's journalism.
As remarked earlier, all of this Arabic satellite programming-some
of it not yet to international standards, some of it bit irrelevant,
and some of it both highly professional and yet Arab in its
cultural authenticity-has dramatically stimulated the sale of
dishes. But with the increasing availability of dishes has come
an increasing concern about program content, particularly when
the programs originate from non-Arab sources.
The concerns were broadly cultural, specifically religious,
and inescapably political. Islamic society in general and in
this case Arab society in society in particular, is simultaneously
proud of a great cultural legacy preserved through the use of
classical Arabic and the media-prevalent modern standard Arabic
derived from the classical language and concerned that this
legacy will not withstand the inroads of what is widely seen
as a morally flawed popular Western culture.
These tensions have existed for more than a hundred years but
the sudden visual impact of popular Western culture courtesy
of television, coupled with radical changes in Western mores-at
least as projected in much television programming-over the past
three decades, has intensified this defensiveness. I am referring
to the effect of partial nudity, the simulation of sexual intercourse,
and episodic sadomasochism; the public transmission of obscene
speech, the acceptance in television programming of premarital
sexual relations as well as the frequent sympathetic treatment
of homosexuality as a publicly acceptable alternative life style
as well as those role reversals where representatives of law
and order are portrayed as villains while outlaws and other
criminal types are portrayed as misunderstood romantic heroes
are shocking to the still strongly held conventions in the Arab
world. These conventions are almost universally held to be paramount
in public life even by those individuals or elites who may ignore
them, relatively speaking, in their own private lives and in
their own private entertainment.
To ignore these conventions, as Iranian Television to a certain
degree did during the year preceding the fall of the Shah, is
to be in political peril. It is instructive that at the time
of the Iranian Revolution one of the first targets for the mobs
that surged out of the popular quarters of Teheran was the Iranian
TV station.
So the first political concern was of the danger of a political
reaction-of an anti-Western, Islamic fundamentalist reaction-to
the sudden easy availability of disorienting if not destabilizing
cultural materials via DBS/DTH satellite transmission, under
which pro-Western Arab governments would be held responsible
by radical opposition political forces for the culturally subversive
content of Western television programming.
Arab national television channels have always to a greater or
lesser extend re-broadcast Western programming, particularly
movies, serials, and sitcoms. But this was far different from
the specter of indiscriminate Western programming, no longer
selectively identified for re-broadcast by the national TV stations
and even when acceptable as a whole still subject to censorship
by the national channels for any socially offensive individual
scenes.
The second political concern has to do with government sensitivity
to unfavorable news reporting by the satellite stations. Sensitivity
to reports in the foreign press that are critical of Arab governments
is nothing new but since the foreign press has always had a
very limited circulation in the Arab World and can be kept off
the newsstands by government censors, the situation was never
as grave as in the case of what is taken to be critical, unfavorable,
or biased satellite news reports. Over the past few years BBC
World television service has generally been considered to be
more of a thorn in the side of Arab governments than CNN International
but the fact that both satellite news services broadcast in
English has reduced the danger as it is officially perceived.
That situation has changed now that Orbit is transmitting an
Arabic version of the BBC World Service with full editorial
control remaining in the hands of the BBC in other words, of
non-Arabs.
The third political concern has been the possibility of satellite
broadcasts from hostile countries. There have been recurrent
fears that the radical Islamic fundamentalist movement in the
Lebanon, Hizbollah, would launch a satellite station devoted
to undermining the moderate Arab governments. It is also instructive
that Iran-which has recently banned the use of dishes within
its own borders-is reportedly still exploring the possibility
of sending up its own satellite for television transmission
to the rest of the world.
So most of the Gulf, Jordan, and Syria but in particular Saudi
Arabia--where dishes are now banned--have taken up an alternative
delivery system to the Direct to Home satellite system, the
MMDS-Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service which is also
know as "wireless cable."
Whether the programming to be transmitted by MMDS is generated
locally or pulled down from satellite and retransmitted, the
critical factor is the employment of a local broadband delivery
system to individual locations from a central transmission point
in which a high power microwave transmitter delivers a multi-channel
signal to individual standard television receivers either directly
or through a series of repeaters or "beam benders"
used to overcome obstructions. The MMDS signal is also encoded
or "scrambled" at this central transmission point
since the imperative for the system is subscription television
or Pay-TV.
In an ideal system,
signals broadcast at microwave frequencies can be received by
small, lightweight, and comparatively inexpensive home antennas
and then converted to VHF or UHF super-band frequencies and
decoded for reception by the standard TV set.
Studies and most of the decisions to implement were taken in
the early nineties when the possibility (which is now theoretically
on the horizon) of harnessing existing non-fiber optic telephone
systems for cable transmission was inconceivable and the cost
of securing rights of way and proceeding to dig up streets to
lay cable were unacceptable. But like cable, MMDS was attractive
in the Arab world because it promised the possibility of developing
a pre-emptive alternative to the inevitable appearance of DTH
satellite channels originating outside of the region but with
footprints extending into the region.
But by the mid-nineties DTH television is now a fact of life
with widespread dish ownership through the region and particularly
in the Gulf and it is certain to increase unless legally forbidden
as footprints became larger and down links stronger. This increase
will be abetted by the rapid increase in available satellite
programming in Arabic as well as Western languages, the rapid
drop in the cost of dishes thanks to local manufacturing, a
very competitive market, and the stronger satellite signals,
which make smaller, cheaper dishes more viable than ever before.
As such three patterns are appearing: first, the Jordanian /Gulf
pattern, in which relatively modest MMDS systems are favored
and operate as subscription television services by the government
carrying prestige English-language foreign programming-such
as CNN, BBC, AFRTS, CFI, and Prime Sports as well as MBC and/or
ART-which has minimal cultural-conflict impact and can co-exist
with DTH.
The second pattern is being developed by Saudi Arabia where
dishes have been at least nominally banned and a sophisticated
and expensive MMDS system is now being implemented by the private
sector at an estimated cost of US$200 million dollars. In contrast
to the small basically city-states of the Gulf Emirates and
Kuwait, or the Jordanian MMDS which is limited to the capital
city of Greater Amman, the Saudi system will span the entire
(and vast) territory of Saudi Arabia and the programming will
be offered for transmission via satellite in neighboring countries.
The third pattern is that of Egypt. A proposal to move Egypt's
joint venture Pay-TV operation CNE from encoded terrestrial
UHF transmission to an MMDS system was provisionally endorsed
more than a year ago by the ministers of information and telecommunications
(the latter controlling the microwave frequencies). But then
CNE, or more accurately, Multichoice Egypt, the private sector
company that now administers CNE's subscription management service,
recently undertook a study of MMDS and on the basis of that
study has now effectively recommended against its adaptation.
(Multichoice Egypt is the name of the highly successful Johannesburg-based
Multichoice Africa operation in Cairo).
We will take a closer look at the Saudi and Egyptian models
as they have the most unambiguous bearing on the future of MMDS
in the region. The initiative for MMDS in Saudi Arabia was undertaken
by MBC.
Saudi MMDS provides for the delivery of encrypted digital television
programming from an uplink facility in England, via satellite,
to approximately every population center in the Kingdom, followed
by controlled redistribution through terrestrial microwave transmission
to subscribers' homes, hotels, and other sites (private sector
offices, clubs, educational institutions, diplomatic missions,
and ministries).
The television programming transmitted from the London area
will utilize a technology developed by General Instruments and
used world-wide by many international program delivery services
since 1992. It is an all-digital television communications system
encompassing digital compression, digital transmission, and
conditional access using digital encryption technology. This
digital video/audio impression and access control design allows
up to ten individual television programs with stereo audio to
be transmitted within one satellite transponder. (Saudi MMDS
will be in fact offering twenty channels)
The first three channels will be provided without change. They
are Saudi national channels 1 and 2 and MBC-1-the present general
channel. The remaining 17 channels will be provided as subscription
television. They will include four new MBC channels--MBC-2 (a
film channel), MBC-3 (a family-children channel), MBC-4 (a sports
channel), and MBC-5 (general entertainment). And some of the
neighboring national TV channels like Kuwait TV and Oman TV
systems should be operating by the first quarter of 1996.
However information provided in private conversation by a high
ranking executive in ART (Arab Radio and Television) indicates
that ART's own four specialized channels (Sports, Film, Variety,
Children's), which are now broadcast in DTH by satellite throughout
the region and are enjoying a strong following in Saudi Arabia
(where dishes installed prior to the ban have not as yet been
ordered to be dismantled) as well as in the Gulf and Egypt,
will also be transmitted by Saudi MMDS.
Although the intention is to provide only programming which
is acceptable to the Saudi Ministry of Information, a precautionary
design has been developed to assure complete control over the
content of television signals received in the Kingdom through
the MMDS system. Where a specific undesirable program presentation
is known of ahead of time, the access control system in Riyadh
issues control signals to the addressable decoders and the access
control system will substitute that program with other viewing
material available on a stand-by basis. When the undesirable
program content is not known ahead of time, an editor has access
to a real-time control mechanism which will interrupt the transmission
and replace the segment of undesirable programming with a previously
prepared teletext message.
The editorial specialist will restore the original program when
he is satisfied that unacceptable program content has ended,
by again using the push button switch control. Since a five-second
delay has been inserted in each television channel at each MMDS
redistribution point, the editor has up to five seconds to react
to interrupt each program. The MMDS system will work for geographic
as well as political reasons as the exclusive transmitting system
for foreign television programming in Saudi Arabia and Qatar,
which has also banned dishes and started its own much more modest
MMDS system and which theoretically shares the Saudi official
interpretation of Islam; and it will work to a lesser extend
for similar reasons in a state of coexistence with DTH in much
of the rest of the Gulf and in Jordan.
The geographic factor is that with the exception of a concentrated
business district the pattern of construction in Saudi Arabia
and the Gulf is that of low-skyline horizontal expansion of
residential quarters on flat desert terrain rather than the
construction of high-rise structures. Wealthy Saudis build larger
compounds with bigger palaces, they do not build higher. Low
income housing is also invariably of one or two stories attached
or semi-attached units since the land and expanding infrastructure
is available and the conservative social mores prefer this sort
of dwelling where human interaction is familiar rather than
the high-rise elevator systems and long corridors that are impersonal
in the grouping of people and in particular in the mixing of
men and women. (Before anyone too easily ridicules this Saudi/Gulf
perspective it would be wise to consider city planning studies
undertaken in the USA which have developed the concept of "defensible
space" and which reveal that high-rise low income housing
with the elevator as its the critical point is always far more
crime-prone and in particular rape-prone than low-rise smaller
scale low-income housing.
In Egypt this geographic factor does not hold. Greater Cairo,
which contains more than a third of Egypt's 50 million plus
population is jammed into the relatively narrow Nile Valley
and the combination of rising property values and the shortage
of desirable housing and luxury office space in the most fashionable
quarters has resulted in significant construction of high-rise
buildings throughout central Cairo. Four UHF channels can be
allotted to CNE; no more unused frequencies are available with
the expansion in recent years of Egypt TV's regional channels.
When ORBICOM Transmission recently undertook a feasibility study
for an MMDS system in Cairo on behalf of Multichoice and CNE
the results were disappointing. More than any other form of
transmission, the MMDS system relies on clear electronic line
of sight from transmitter to receiver. That is not generally
available in Cairo.
UHF in Cairo has 90 percent penetration--this means that 95
percent of the time UHF transmission from the CNE tower on the
Muqattam Hills which are the highest point in Greater Cairo
and which flank nearly the entire city from the east has 90
percent penetration.
But an MMDS system with one transmitter on Muqattam can only
reach 44 percent of CNE's present subscribers in Cairo because
of high-rise building obstruction and, in Heliopolis, the contouring
of terrain. (The latter outlying district is of importance since
it is where 40 percent of CNE's present subscribers reside.)
The combination of sloping terrain and high-rise building indicates
that only 16 percent of the population would have a clear path.
Nor are "beam benders" or repeaters seen as a solution
in Cairo as Jordan TV's MMDS management believes they will prove
to be in Amman. Beam benders, according to Multichoice-who operate
successful MMDS systems in Nigeria and (on a selective pointto-point
business communication basis) in South Africa, work only when
you can isolate the receivers of the bended beam from other
reception points to avoid cross reflection of signals, as can
be done for the highly selective coverage in South Africa; and
presumably also when beam bending down into isolated valleys
from a series of hills as in the case of Amman. Even if CNE
undertook the expense of installing a second transmitter close
to Heliopolis, they would be spending half a million dollars
to raise Heliopolis penetration from 26 percent to 32 percent
and still not effect in any way the loss of Zamalek.
In Zamalek, which is the smallest but most fashionable quarter
of Cairo, MMDS would have almost no penetration at all. So increasingly
the thinking in both Multichoice/CNE and official circles in
Cairo is DTH. On the first of September of this year Multichoice
Africa will test transmission on the new Panam Sat 4 (PAS 4)
with its own digitized offering of 16 encrypted channels. A
fixed 90cm dish which would cost less than US $200 will receive
a strong signal. While Multichoice has not as yet gone public
with its offering or even necessarily committed itself to the
progranuning for all 16 channels, the Multichoice DTH Service
is certain to offer at a minimum the successful bouquet formula
of separate channels for English language, sports, film, music/entertainment,
and news, as well as four of ART's Arabic-language channels--sports,
movies, children, and general.
Since the only decoders which can legally be sold in Cairo are
the CNE/Multichoice ERDETO decoders which will also decode the
PAS 4 encrypted channels, the short term future for both Multichoice
Egypt and CNE will be in selling decoders and subscriptions
to what should be a large market for PAS 4 reception. Obviously
a 2.4 rotating dish that has already been installed, if aligned
on a well-made polar mount, would be able to pick up the PAS
4 signal which will be available at a difficult angle of 72
degrees East. In theory all that the approximately 100,000 dish
owners in Cairo and the 100,000 dish owners outside Cairo would
then have to do is acquire a Multichoice/CNE decoder and pay
the subscription for access to what a Multichoice executive
predicts will be "one of the hottest birds in town."
Cultural consciousness will be exercised in deciding what English
programming generated outside the Arab world is the least culturally
subversive.
Egypt's own communication philosophy differs significantly from
that of Saudi Arabia and when this philosophy is combined with
the technical limitations on MMDS in the Cairo area, it has
pointed Egypt away from MMDS and towards DTH broadcasting. The
Egyptian communication philosophy is also influenced-implicitly
if not explicitly-by a conservative Islamic ethic. There is
no soft porn or even partial nudity or obscene language on Egypt
TV, or the treatment of criminals as sympathetic characters;
however, it is an Islamic ethic that is interpreted broadly
enough to allow belly dancing, Broadway-style chorus girl routines,
mini-skirts and bathing suits, movies with nightclub scenes
that involve alcoholic consumption, and films both Western and
Egyptian in which only the final sequences in seduction scenes
must be cut.
Basically this philosophy, as articulated frequently by Egypt's
minister of information Safwat El Sherif can be called "cultural
sovereignty theory". It is that instead of attempting to
bar or heavily restrict and censor foreign TV programming, Egypt
should concentrate upon upgrading and expanding its own television
product--be it news or entertainment-so that it can assure its
cultural sovereignty in a globally competitive situation. This
philosophy is particularly attractive to Egypt since it alone
among the Arab states has the depth of talent for such an undertaking,
in the form of actors, singers, dancers, musicians, comedians,
journalists, producers, directors and even Qur'an reciters;
and, courtesy of its earlier domination of the once powerful
Arab film industry, of a dialect of Arabic that is widely understood
throughout the Arab world.
Egypt is now committed to launch its own DTH Satellite--Nilesat--and
is already seriously soliciting international tenders. Private
industry experts familiar with the region expect that if still
more individual Arab states or regional groupings enter the
DTH satellite sweepstakes, the market could easily become so
overcrowded over the next five years (Nilesat is estimated to
be two years away from transmission) that only the financially
fittest (Saudi Arabia's proposed SaudiSat as part of the MMDS
project ) and the most resourceful in producing attractive local
products (Nilesat) may survive. Then there will be in a curious
face-off between these two Arab allies who will be competing
with rival satellites high in the sky and with alternative delivery
systems and communication philosophies in that treasured space
we call home.
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