Word: mtv
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...from Lebanon, wants to live Al Helm (The Dream). He's trying to become a race-car driver, and he's got two experts to help him: Khaled al-Mutawe, winner of the Dubai Racing Academy's 2007 cup, and Rasha al-Emam, the Saudi production director for MTV and a race-car driver herself. Hobeika struggles and at one point admits, "I spent seven years at university, and I can't find a job. I just want to achieve something and impress everyone...
This is all part of a reality show, after all, and every reality show needs its epiphany. Al-Emam is part of the team developing MTV Arabia, a channel for the Arab world that will make its debut on Nov. 17, and Al Helm is the local version of the popular MTV show Made. Al Helm, however, is more than just youthful wish fulfillment. "It's very powerful and unusual for an Arab man to admit failure like that on TV," al-Emam says. And in Saudi Arabia, MTV's largest market in the Middle East, the episode quietly subverts...
With its careful mix of aspirational glamour and boundary-pushing, the new channel is crucial to MTV's global expansion: in its target markets in the region, 65% of the population is under 25. Connecting with those young people means more than just promoting pop culture, says Abdullatif al-Sayegh, 35, the CEO of Arab Media Group (AMG), which holds the MTV license in the region. "We are not introducing a music channel," he insists. "We are introducing a platform for youth, where we can bring up a lot of issues and solve them...
Beamed from Dubai, MTV Arabia targets 15-to-35-year-olds from Bahrain to Cairo. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the channel's most important market for advertising but also the most conservative, so K.S.A. 2.0, as the youngest MTV executives call it, is the default setting for how far is too far. The launch team, a mix of Saudis, Palestinians, Emiratis, Iraqis and Lebanese, decided on a 60-40 split between music videos and reality programming...
Even after rolling out 52 other international versions, MTV is working hard to fit in. The creative team is cooking up graphics announcing the call to prayer--MTV Indonesia already has them--and on Thursday evenings, ladies'-night music programming encourages female viewers who are not allowed to go out to instead organize parties at home with girlfriends. Over in the editing suite, Western music videos are cleaned up according to the "4-3-2-1 rule": close-ups of a bikini are O.K. for 1 sec. but not 2; 3 sec. in a moving shot works...