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Abstract
The mass proliferation of satellite TV in the Arab language has led to a de facto cultural community, an umma by satellite. Based on a study of middle class “modern” families in Tunis, as well as more general soundings throughout the Arab world, this article examines the emergence of Arab satellite TV and its social, political, and cultural effects. The exposure of these Maghrebi TV viewers to “national,” “Arab,” or “French,” televisions is relative and fluctuating. The article explores the varied reasons for following foreign transmissions: curiosity, disenchantment with local (often government controlled) TV stations. The latter mainly, but not exclusively, still serve to draw individuals together especially at Ramadan into new forms of sociability. Widening enthusiasm for Arab satellite channels (which many Governments tried unsuccessfully to curtail) is due to increased demands for greater penetration of the events which are shaking the Maghreb, the Arab and Muslim world. The Al‐Jazira phenomenon is given particular attention. Its growing success in the Arab world comes from its criticism of the powers that be. Indeed, viewers discover for the first time exiled or locally silenced opposition personalities through exposure to satellite TV. This feeds distrust of official power but at the same time can actually enhance feelings of powerlessness. Another reason for its success is that American and European satellite channels are perceived as hostile to the Arabs and the Muslims, often only developing the point of view of their governments. The article concludes by suggesting that we must situate the relation of individuals to televised images in a framework of identitarian references: people adapt, construct, and navigate their identities through the complex interplay of their own demands and the varied offerings on satellite and terrestrial channels. The author suggests that in the Maghreb, withdrawal into the myriad offerings of satellite televisions and the Web is a means for individuals to satisfy their multiple and varied needs, and to manifest their vague desire to free themselves from the oppressive guardianship of their State and society.
Notes
[1] We have remarked that the “modernity” which characterizes these families and their members is not expressed by an opposition to traditional customs, but rather by the incorporation into their modern life of practices and values through which familial sociability establishes itself. This manifestation is all the more lively when the presence of children becomes the central pivot of family life.
[2] In the three countries of the Maghreb, it is estimated that 40 to 60% of households possess at least one parabola [satellite dish receiver]: the Algerians are the best equipped. In Tunisia the number of satellite dishes increased from 50,000 in 1994 to more than 500,000 six years later, according to an estimate given by the Tunisian film‐maker Nouri Bouzid in the Cahiers du Cinéma (no. 557, May 2001). The interruption by the Tunisian authorities of programmes broadcast on Hertzian waves by France 2 in October 1999 is said to explain the rush of the Tunisians to buy satellite dishes. According to the census of 2004, 90% of Tunisian household possess at least one television receiver.
[3] “Retrospective des atteintes subies par la chaîne en 2004”, Communiqué de Reporters sans Frontières (RSF: www.rsf.org), Paris, 27 Jan. 2005.
[4] A score of journalists of the Maghreb figure among the 450 of fifteen different nationalities who work for this channel. We may cite the case of the Tunisian journalist M’hamed Krichen. He had to go into exile after the suppression of his radiophonic international news programme on the waves of Radio Tunis, in 1994.
[5] Al‐Jazira was the only television broadcaster in the world to have had a permanent correspondent in Kabul before the events of September 11.
[6] Gilles Paris, “Al‐Jazira, the télé which is waking up the Arab world”, Le Monde, 25 Oct. 2001.
[7] We have observed that Tunisian TV viewers look at it (from time to time), in spite of their open hostility to the Americans in Iraq, because the channel gives large coverage of violations of human rights in the Arab world and the activities of these rights in these countries. On the question of the sources of the financing this channel, see Le Monde 11 Mar. 2004.
[8] Their transmission ceased in January 2003, but other projects are said to be in the course of development.
[9] Le Monde, 8 Apr. 2004.
[10] The best‐known weekly political programme of Al‐Jazira, “Al‐adage al‐moua’kis” [Opposite Opinion] is a televised political duel during which, for an hour and half, and live, two guests with diametrically opposed points of view face each other and reply to faxes, emails and telephoned questions from TV viewers. The programme is hosted by the Syrian journalist, Faysal Al‐Qassim who often adopts a provocative style. The debates deal in turn with the corruption and authoritarianism of Arab political regimes, with the consequences of the war in Iraq, with the normalization of relations with Israel, followed by a vote of the TV viewers.
[11] During the electoral campaign of 2004, the Tunisian government intervened with the directors of the channel to make sure that they postponed the transmission of the “Al‐Ittijah al‐moura.kis” programme, to which the opposition leader Néjib Chehdi was to have been invited; the programme in question was never broadcast.
[12] www.aljazeera.net, 26 Mar. 2003.
[13] Ibid.
[14] AFP despatch at http://www.libanvision.com/starac-liban.htm.
[15] “Le succès de la télé‐réalité dans les pays arabes provoque la colère des islamistes”, Le Monde, 12 Mar. 2004.
[16] According to an audience survey made by a private Tunisian company, Sigma Conseil, 26 April 2004. An example of the popularity of the programme in Tunisia: the Tunis correspondent of the Arab newspaper El Hay, published in London, describes his arrival at Tunis airport on a flight from Beirut, where he was warmly welcomed by a large group of the programme’s Tunisian participants (El Hay, 17 Mar. 2004).
[17] Le Monde, 11 Mar. 2004.
[18] One version of TV‐reality entered the national Tunisian channel’s televisual programming for the month of Ramadan. “Tariq El noujoum” [The Road of the Stars] had several dozen young people of both sexes, who were aiming for careers as singers, spending the daytime together. Every evening, after their turn to sing, several of them were successively eliminated, by the vote of the TV viewers.
[19] In the Maghreb, during the war in Afghanistan, the televised tapes of Osama bin Ladin on Al‐Jazira were very closely followed.
[20] According to the latest studies, 21 million Maghrebins, including 14.8 million Algerians, representing a penetration rate of 29%, watch the French television channels every day. The penetration rate of the French channels is particularly high in Algeria (46%). Next comes Tunisia (penetration rate 17%) where French television faces the competition of the oriental channels and where the satellite dishes are aimed rather toward Arabsat or Nilesat (Arab channels). In Morocco the penetration rate is 10%. AFP dispatch, 29 June 2004, citing a private company study.
[21] The pirating of the French satellite packages TPS and Canalsat is very common in the countries of the Maghreb. Cards are sold for about 100 francs on the informal (black) market.
[22] Programme broadcast by the French channel M6 which was a big success among the adolescents of the Maghreb countries, especially those living in urban areas. Cf. Younès Alami, “Loft Story” seen from Casablanca, in Le Monde diplomatique, June 2002.
[23] Example of a very successful Saudi programme, “Tash ma tash”, which can be translated as “Fail or Pass”, broadcast every evening of Ramadan for the last eleven years and which touches on themes and film scenes which often arouse the wrath of conservative elements in Saudi society (Menoret Citation2004).
[24] We have observed that a transmission described as entertainment, diffused by a French channel, can be regarded by our TV viewers as “political”, for the mere reason that political figures appear in it.
[25] Every thirty‐three years Ramadan and New Years Eve coincide at least once, as a result of the coincidence of the Hegirian and Gregorian calendars. And during this time, Tunisian television throughout Ramadan, and the French television channels on New Year’s Eve, are viewed and have more or less important significance in households according to the degree they have taken root in the family structure (Choika Citation2003, pp. 167–183).
[26] Proximity envisaged as a kind of “oscillatory dynamic”, defined by Caroline Hymen as “spatial, affective or temporal dynamic which suggests a movement intermediary between fluctuation and aimless wandering, however small it may be, between opposite terms (familiar versus foreign, imminent versus far‐off)” (Hymen Citation1997: 184).
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