Arab Media Group will launch the country's first major 24-hour television channel devoted to community affairs on the first day of Ramadan, the companys chief executive said yesterday. The free Arabic-language channel, which will be called Noor Dubai, will be an extension of AMG's Noor Dubai radio station, which hosts discussions on topics of local concern ranging from literature to entrepreneurship.
"It will be a progressive Islamic channel," said Abdullatif al Sayegh, the chief executive of AMG, which is based in Dubai. "Nothing like this exists." Although the satellite channel will be available to viewers throughout the Arab world, its focus will be on the UAE. The majority of programming will consist of talk shows, current affairs, game shows and documentaries, 80 per cent of which will be locally produced.
"It's like a newspaper on TV," Mr Sayegh said. The remainder will be outsourced, including the historical Islamic series Abu Jaafar Al Mansour, produced by Qatar TV and Jordans Arab TV Media, which will air during Ramadan, according to Wasa Tuffaha, a producer for the station. Noor Dubai will be available on Arabsat Badr 4. The company plans to roll out an English-language version in the second quarter of next year.
Noor Dubai is a far cry from the other two television ventures that AMG's television arm, the Arabian Television Network, has launched in the past year. The company attracted global attention when it teamed up with Viacom to create MTV Arabia last winter. The station features 60 per cent international music, 40 per cent Arabic music and local adaptations of the channels non-music shows minus the scantily clad divas and lewd language that defines the MTV brand in other parts of the world.
Last month, AMG launched Nickelodeon Arabia, the Middle Easts first Arabic-language, free-to-air channel dedicated to children aged two to 14, on Nilesat and Arabsat. Founded in 2005, AMG owns a wide array of media properties, including a radio division (ARN) that broadcasts across eight frequencies, a publishing division (Arwaq Publishing) that operates three daily newspapers and several magazines, an events company (Done Events), an outdoor advertising company (Shoof Advertising), an independent distribution company (Tawseel) and a printing press house (Masar).
The popularity of Noor Dubai radio taught AMG executives the potential power of community-based talk programming in the region, Mr Sayegh said. "It touches peoples daily lives, it tackles their concerns, solves their issues and gets them in the loop of everything that is happening around them," he said. About five or six of the radio stations programmes would be translated to television, he said. The rest will be new programming, created by a staff of between 65 and 80 new hires. Highlights include a prime time talk show in which an older Emirati woman and her younger co-host discuss child-rearing, marriage and education, and an evening community forum called Marmas Al-Noor.
"For the next 10 years, this country is going to go through a lot of challenges with all the development that is taking place," Mr Sayegh said. "People need media that will help them understand it." @Email:khagey@thenational.ae
