DOHA // Since hitting the airwaves in September 2005, Al Jazeera Children’s Channel has broadcast thousands of hours of animated, talk and game shows in classical Arabic. It has also earned a fistful of awards and started to put a modern and distinctly Arab face on children’s programming in the region.
“We have planted the seed of change,” said Mahmoud Bouneb, the network’s executive general manager. “We have planted the seed of hope for a better tomorrow, but also for a better Arab citizen.”
Mr Bouneb recalls first hearing of the Qatari First Lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Missned’s idea for an educational, entertaining and locally produced Arabic language children’s channel, in 2002.
“I thought it was, not a joke, but let’s say a fantasy, in the Arab world,” he remembers thinking at the time. “I always thought that children’s television was a very serious business and we in the Arab world have no experience with it.”
Seven years ago, locally produced programming for children was practically non-existent. Arabic-language children’s television meant dubbed versions of Bugs Bunny and Yu-Gi-Oh!
Though he had never been involved in children’s television, in early 2003 Mr Bouneb left his job working for the chairman of the board at Al Jazeera News to become the new network’s executive general manager. For more than two years he worked with producers, programmers and consultants from the Paris-based LaGardere Group to develop an identity for Al Jazeera Children’s Channel.
“I remember the first thing we discussed was, ‘Are we going to let children debate freely on this channel?’” he said. “My answer from Day One was yes, because in Arabic culture we don’t have a tradition of listening to the children ... I said ‘Let’s listen to the children, we would be amazed by what we hear.’
Today, children’s voices dominate JCC programming, in shows such as Nadra Ala, a weekly debate show, and Ad Darb, a popular, fast-moving game show.
At the station’s Education City headquarters, on the edge of Doha, the walls and furniture are painted in bright, child-friendly colours, such as orange and sky blue. Cheerful staffers watch over a steady stream of visiting youngsters and a wide variety of in-house productions keep three top-of-the-line studios in near-constant use.
JCC, which also has offices in Amman, Beirut, Cairo, Paris and Kuala Lumpur, produces about 60 per cent of its programming. That content reaches 45 to 50 million households across the Arab world and Europe.
A year ago, the station split into two channels – Baraem TV, aimed at three to six-year-olds, and the original Al Jazeera Children’s Channel, for seven to 15-year-olds.
Baraem’s animated series Nan and Lili has been honoured repeatedly, including earning a certificate of merit at last year’s International Communications, Video and Interactive Media Competition and, last month, the CINE Golden Eagle Award from a US consortium for innovative TV and cinema. Competitors such as Nickelodeon Arabic and MBC-3 have in recent years begun to produce in-house game shows and other edutainment programming much like that seen on JCC.
JCC has produced or co-produced more than 50 films. Still Alive in Gaza, a feature documentary about Palestinian youth that JCC co-produced, will screen at the Berlin International Film Festival next month.
JCC also offers special programming for Ramadan and a show on the Quran, but does not allow religious ideals to dominate. “Islam is part of our daily life, it’s our religion, and it should be integrated into our content,” said Mr Bouneb. “But we are not a dogmatic channel.”
Nor is JCC a commercial venture. Its US$100 million (Dh367m) annual budget is provided mostly by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development.
Even with minimal marketing, the network has made an impact. “Everything that contributes to the compounding of knowledge in the region is a positive," said Hatem Samman, a director of Booz and Company’s Ideation Center, a Dubai-based think tank.
Yet he questioned the breadth of the station’s influence. “How do you compete with sources from the West and the US in particular?” asked Mr Samman, pointing out that his own children mostly watched English-language stations such as the Disney channel. “You need to have a comparative advantage. One way to do that is if you cannot beat them, you join them, with joint ventures and the like.”
Thus, JCC’s two main objectives are more in-house content and greater reach. It has signed partnership agreements with production firms in the UK, Canada and Japan, among others. An animated show about the Arabic hero Salahaddin and Richard the Lionheart, co-produced with a Malaysian firm, will begin airing this summer.
Within two years, Mr Bouneb hopes to create an English-language version of Baraem and move into the North American market.
Later this month, JCC will launch a video-on-demand platform on its website, where visitors will be able to access detailed programming information and watch their favourite shows at any time.
Mr Bouneb wants “to increase the local flavour, the local identity”, in JCC’s programming. “We are just a television channel which is trying to bring beauty into the lives of the Arabic children,” he said, “to make a difference in their lives and to give them a better future.”
---
originally appeared in 8 Jan, 2010, The National, www.thenational.ae
Showing posts with label Arab world. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arab world. Show all posts
1.08.2010
12.16.2009
Arabs encouraged to blog and be heard
DOHA // For Raouf Shabayek, blogging is easy.
“Everyone can blog,” the editor-in-chief of the Dubai-based consultancy Real Marketing Solutions said during a blogging conference on Saturday. “It doesn’t have to be 1,000 or 2,000 words, it can be one sentence, one picture – we can all add something to the conversation.”
Five years ago, Mr Shabayek started a blog about Arabic entrepreneurship (blog.shebayek.com). Waves of positive feedback soon inspired him to organise his writing into a book, which he published himself. He has since published three more, and now sees blogging as a potential Gutenberg Bible for the region. "We in the Arab world can now have our own Renaissance," he said.
About 300 speakers, bloggers and guests turned up at “Mudawanat: All About Blogging,” a one-day forum held at Doha’s Sharq Village resort, to help realise that vision. IctQatar, a government-run technology support group, organised the event to nurture interest in blogging in Qatar and across the region.
Arabic is the world’s fifth most widely spoken language, yet Arabic speakers represent less than three per cent of all web users, according to Internet World Stats. Nearly three-quarters of the world’s blogs are written from Europe and the United States. A June study by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society found there are an estimated 35,000 active blogs in the Arabic language. But compare that to 70,000 blogs in Farsi.
Yet the potential is considerable. A report from Internet World Stats found that internet users in the Middle East and North Africa increased nearly twenty-fold between 2000 and 2009, faster than in any other language or region. Google searches for the word “mudawanat” (“blogging” in Arabic) have increased 20 per cent to 50 per cent in the past few years, most prominently in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco.
The conference’s keynote speaker, Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at Altimeter Group, a social media research and advisory firm in California, called for clarity among those interested in starting a blog. “What is your topic, and who is your audience?” Mr Owyang asked. “Find your area of interest and focus on it.”
He advocated several steps: treat your blog like a brand; make an editorial calendar; hire a designer to improve the site; and incorporate social networking tools from Facebook and Twitter to better respond to your readers.
An attendee asked Mr Owyang if social networks were pulling web surfers away from blogs. “They’re not taking away from each other; they’re all becoming one,” he said. “You’re building a house and you have many tools – a hammer, saw, nails – you should use them all.”
Ahmad Hamzawi, Google’s head of engineering for the Middle East and North Africa, highlighted some of those tools. He showed how to use Google’s keyword tools to find frequently used search terms, explaining that increasing the use of such terms on a blog increases that blog’s search rank.
For those uncomfortable with English, Mr Hamzawi explained Google Translate, an add-on that offers immediate translations of blog posts in up to 50 languages. Finally, he emphasised the growing popularity of the form: more than 120,000 new blogs are launched every day. Technorati, which indexes blogs, reported in October 2008 that there were 133 million blogs worldwide.
There are about 1,100 blogs in Qatar, according to Ammar Mohammed Khaled, who blogs at ammar- talk.com and founded Al Jazeera Talk, where Arab youth discuss a wide range of issues online. He urged more Qataris to blog, pointing out that blogs can incorporate words, images and video and blogs offer freedom when so much news is controlled.
At least one audience member appreciated this last point. Hassan Al Jefairi said that over the past two decades he had been forced out of columnist positions from three of Qatar’s Arabic-language newspapers because his work ruffled government feathers.
“Everybody knows I’ve got a hot mouth and a hot pen, and I write about hot issues,” said al Jefairi, who writes mostly on environmental and economic issues.
Recently he took to the internet. Al Jefairi’s new blog – he calls it an “electronic magazine” – attracted more than 3,000 visitors in its first month and inspired him to distribute his writing in book form. “There’s more freedom of speech today,” he said.
“The topics I am raising today, 15 years ago I couldn’t discuss them.”
Shabina Khatri discusses a wide variety of issues on her personal and professional blogs, as well as in contributions to Global Voices Online. Her initial inspiration? A slow work day, several years ago. “I was bored at work and decided to start a blog,” said Ms Khatri, whose site quickly gained attention. “You don’t have to be famous. Anybody in this room can just start blogging.”
Blogs can also be a way to make money, according to Mr Hamzawi. He showed attendees how to use Google’s AdSense and FeedBurner applications to place advertisements on their blog and generate income.
Mr Owyang offered a warning to the profit-seekers. “Start a blog with passion first, and then if it turns into a business, great,” he said. “But if you’re starting a blog just to make money, it will probably fail.”
Originally published in The National --
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091216/FOREIGN/712159952
“Everyone can blog,” the editor-in-chief of the Dubai-based consultancy Real Marketing Solutions said during a blogging conference on Saturday. “It doesn’t have to be 1,000 or 2,000 words, it can be one sentence, one picture – we can all add something to the conversation.”
Five years ago, Mr Shabayek started a blog about Arabic entrepreneurship (blog.shebayek.com). Waves of positive feedback soon inspired him to organise his writing into a book, which he published himself. He has since published three more, and now sees blogging as a potential Gutenberg Bible for the region. "We in the Arab world can now have our own Renaissance," he said.
About 300 speakers, bloggers and guests turned up at “Mudawanat: All About Blogging,” a one-day forum held at Doha’s Sharq Village resort, to help realise that vision. IctQatar, a government-run technology support group, organised the event to nurture interest in blogging in Qatar and across the region.
Arabic is the world’s fifth most widely spoken language, yet Arabic speakers represent less than three per cent of all web users, according to Internet World Stats. Nearly three-quarters of the world’s blogs are written from Europe and the United States. A June study by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society found there are an estimated 35,000 active blogs in the Arabic language. But compare that to 70,000 blogs in Farsi.
Yet the potential is considerable. A report from Internet World Stats found that internet users in the Middle East and North Africa increased nearly twenty-fold between 2000 and 2009, faster than in any other language or region. Google searches for the word “mudawanat” (“blogging” in Arabic) have increased 20 per cent to 50 per cent in the past few years, most prominently in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco.
The conference’s keynote speaker, Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at Altimeter Group, a social media research and advisory firm in California, called for clarity among those interested in starting a blog. “What is your topic, and who is your audience?” Mr Owyang asked. “Find your area of interest and focus on it.”
He advocated several steps: treat your blog like a brand; make an editorial calendar; hire a designer to improve the site; and incorporate social networking tools from Facebook and Twitter to better respond to your readers.
An attendee asked Mr Owyang if social networks were pulling web surfers away from blogs. “They’re not taking away from each other; they’re all becoming one,” he said. “You’re building a house and you have many tools – a hammer, saw, nails – you should use them all.”
Ahmad Hamzawi, Google’s head of engineering for the Middle East and North Africa, highlighted some of those tools. He showed how to use Google’s keyword tools to find frequently used search terms, explaining that increasing the use of such terms on a blog increases that blog’s search rank.
For those uncomfortable with English, Mr Hamzawi explained Google Translate, an add-on that offers immediate translations of blog posts in up to 50 languages. Finally, he emphasised the growing popularity of the form: more than 120,000 new blogs are launched every day. Technorati, which indexes blogs, reported in October 2008 that there were 133 million blogs worldwide.
There are about 1,100 blogs in Qatar, according to Ammar Mohammed Khaled, who blogs at ammar- talk.com and founded Al Jazeera Talk, where Arab youth discuss a wide range of issues online. He urged more Qataris to blog, pointing out that blogs can incorporate words, images and video and blogs offer freedom when so much news is controlled.
At least one audience member appreciated this last point. Hassan Al Jefairi said that over the past two decades he had been forced out of columnist positions from three of Qatar’s Arabic-language newspapers because his work ruffled government feathers.
“Everybody knows I’ve got a hot mouth and a hot pen, and I write about hot issues,” said al Jefairi, who writes mostly on environmental and economic issues.
Recently he took to the internet. Al Jefairi’s new blog – he calls it an “electronic magazine” – attracted more than 3,000 visitors in its first month and inspired him to distribute his writing in book form. “There’s more freedom of speech today,” he said.
“The topics I am raising today, 15 years ago I couldn’t discuss them.”
Shabina Khatri discusses a wide variety of issues on her personal and professional blogs, as well as in contributions to Global Voices Online. Her initial inspiration? A slow work day, several years ago. “I was bored at work and decided to start a blog,” said Ms Khatri, whose site quickly gained attention. “You don’t have to be famous. Anybody in this room can just start blogging.”
Blogs can also be a way to make money, according to Mr Hamzawi. He showed attendees how to use Google’s AdSense and FeedBurner applications to place advertisements on their blog and generate income.
Mr Owyang offered a warning to the profit-seekers. “Start a blog with passion first, and then if it turns into a business, great,” he said. “But if you’re starting a blog just to make money, it will probably fail.”
Originally published in The National --
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091216/FOREIGN/712159952
12.04.2009
Young learn principles of print
DOHA // Erika Widén is thinking big. With her new initiative, the director of business development at Qatar’s leading English-language daily newspaper aims to rescue the country’s print media and help build a skilled workforce in the Gulf.
“Not too many people are interested in reading the news around here anymore – they are checking their BlackBerry, maybe getting Al Jazeera on their mobile,” she said at the offices of The Peninsula.
“We want to get these kids interested in reading, interested in the news, and also help them write. There are not a lot of opportunities like this for young people in this region.”
Ms Widén and the Peninsula editor-in-chief, Khalid Abdul Rahim al Sayed, have just launched the Young Peninsula Journalists (YPS) programme, a free journalism training scheme for middle and secondary students. YPJ hopes to engage citizens in news, impart valuable work skills and steer local youth towards a successful career.
On the first day of classes last weekend, the Peninsula offices bustled. Dozens of the programme’s 300 seven to 12th grade students mingled in the halls. Teenage girls in headscarves talked about photography on couches in the lobby. Adolescent boys discussed journalistic integrity. “Some papers are trying their best to cover the real news,” said 13-year-old Vignesh during class. “But some are just publishing news that is not there at all.”
Ethics and accuracy are among the topics of discussion, along with writing, reporting and various media-related concerns. The students come up with their own story ideas – on sport, society, arts, business and more – but are advised to focus on what’s happening in Qatar.
Starting in early January, a YPJ newspaper – with student reporting, photography, graphics and cartoons – will be inserted every Sunday into The Peninsula. The best student work will receive awards.
Over the year-long programme, the students will receive 60 hours of training in the job skills that are much needed in Qatar and across the region. In the UAE, a government body tasked with finding jobs for young Emirati nationals has found the private sector is willing to hire, but often cannot because of a lack of skills.
The Arab Labor Organization estimates unemployment at nearly 15 per cent in Arab countries – the highest for any region.Without intervention, the problem is likely to fester.
“The GCC will remain an unusually young part of the world,” said a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit called The GCC in 2020, which was released last week.
“Much will depend on the extent to which the young population can be harnessed as an effective labour force.”
That goal dovetails with one of YPJ’s lead sponsors. Silatech, an organisation created by Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned in 2008, engages public, private and civil society sectors to create jobs and opportunities for Arab youth.
“This helps young people inside Qatar that give back to Qatari society and enhance its growth,” said Ahmed Younis, director of strategic partnerships and communications at Silatech. “It’s important for the development and growth of the Middle East and North Africa region to be sure young people have a robust set of skills in journalism, public policy, and writing, and this is what we’re hoping to achieve.”
More than half of the YPJ students are Arab, 15 per cent to 20 per cent of whom are Qatari nationals. About 40 per cent are from South Asia, along with a handful of westerners. The initiative will also train 20 students with special needs from The Shaffallah School.
“This is the way the world works today, with people from all different places working together,” said Ms Widén, who put advertisements for the initiative in local Arabic and English-language newspapers. “We want all these different students to be integrated.”
Still, students will learn writing and interviewing skills, the role of a reporter and the value of news. The first class began with the basics – “What is Journalism?” – and ended with an assignment: write the five Ws (who, what, when, where, why) about a recent event.
The Palestinian triplets Yosra, Mohammad and Latifa, all 14, left class together, notebooks in hand. “We want to know more about newspapers, how they work,” said Latifa. She is doing her assignment on natural disasters, while her sister Yosra will focus on crime.
Their brother could not decide what to write about, then he brightened. “I know,” said Mohammad. “I’m going to write about the Algeria-Egypt football match.”
-- originally appeared Friday, 27 Nov 2009, in the National (www.thenational.ae).
“Not too many people are interested in reading the news around here anymore – they are checking their BlackBerry, maybe getting Al Jazeera on their mobile,” she said at the offices of The Peninsula.
“We want to get these kids interested in reading, interested in the news, and also help them write. There are not a lot of opportunities like this for young people in this region.”
Ms Widén and the Peninsula editor-in-chief, Khalid Abdul Rahim al Sayed, have just launched the Young Peninsula Journalists (YPS) programme, a free journalism training scheme for middle and secondary students. YPJ hopes to engage citizens in news, impart valuable work skills and steer local youth towards a successful career.
On the first day of classes last weekend, the Peninsula offices bustled. Dozens of the programme’s 300 seven to 12th grade students mingled in the halls. Teenage girls in headscarves talked about photography on couches in the lobby. Adolescent boys discussed journalistic integrity. “Some papers are trying their best to cover the real news,” said 13-year-old Vignesh during class. “But some are just publishing news that is not there at all.”
Ethics and accuracy are among the topics of discussion, along with writing, reporting and various media-related concerns. The students come up with their own story ideas – on sport, society, arts, business and more – but are advised to focus on what’s happening in Qatar.
Starting in early January, a YPJ newspaper – with student reporting, photography, graphics and cartoons – will be inserted every Sunday into The Peninsula. The best student work will receive awards.
Over the year-long programme, the students will receive 60 hours of training in the job skills that are much needed in Qatar and across the region. In the UAE, a government body tasked with finding jobs for young Emirati nationals has found the private sector is willing to hire, but often cannot because of a lack of skills.
The Arab Labor Organization estimates unemployment at nearly 15 per cent in Arab countries – the highest for any region.Without intervention, the problem is likely to fester.
“The GCC will remain an unusually young part of the world,” said a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit called The GCC in 2020, which was released last week.
“Much will depend on the extent to which the young population can be harnessed as an effective labour force.”
That goal dovetails with one of YPJ’s lead sponsors. Silatech, an organisation created by Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned in 2008, engages public, private and civil society sectors to create jobs and opportunities for Arab youth.
“This helps young people inside Qatar that give back to Qatari society and enhance its growth,” said Ahmed Younis, director of strategic partnerships and communications at Silatech. “It’s important for the development and growth of the Middle East and North Africa region to be sure young people have a robust set of skills in journalism, public policy, and writing, and this is what we’re hoping to achieve.”
More than half of the YPJ students are Arab, 15 per cent to 20 per cent of whom are Qatari nationals. About 40 per cent are from South Asia, along with a handful of westerners. The initiative will also train 20 students with special needs from The Shaffallah School.
“This is the way the world works today, with people from all different places working together,” said Ms Widén, who put advertisements for the initiative in local Arabic and English-language newspapers. “We want all these different students to be integrated.”
Still, students will learn writing and interviewing skills, the role of a reporter and the value of news. The first class began with the basics – “What is Journalism?” – and ended with an assignment: write the five Ws (who, what, when, where, why) about a recent event.
The Palestinian triplets Yosra, Mohammad and Latifa, all 14, left class together, notebooks in hand. “We want to know more about newspapers, how they work,” said Latifa. She is doing her assignment on natural disasters, while her sister Yosra will focus on crime.
Their brother could not decide what to write about, then he brightened. “I know,” said Mohammad. “I’m going to write about the Algeria-Egypt football match.”
-- originally appeared Friday, 27 Nov 2009, in the National (www.thenational.ae).
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