Radio wars

In one of the rare cases in the calm world of radio stations in the Middle East, Lebanon's Sawt el Ghad, "stole" one of Voice of Lebanon (VDL or Sawt Loubnan) 's stars: Monique Bassil Zaarour.

Monique Bassila Zaarour is a very popular nutrition expert. She has published books and manages nutrition clinics)

VDL promptly replaced her by Sawssan Wazen Jabri, a very successful nutrition/business women (she owns the Nutrition Diet Center in various Arab countries)

If we consider the huge number of phone calls received by both programs, no doubt dieting is a booming business in Lebanon!

SMS messaging on TV

Last week Egypt based Melody Hits decided to stop broadcasting the sms (text) messages sent by its viewers (on the bottom of the screen)

The channel announced that it was responding to demands by viewers. Interestingly, Melody relies (besides the cash creator music management business) on advertising revenues. The channel probably decided that sms revenues were too low; by scraping them out, it can now sell this "clean screen" to advertisers. Rotana (its main competitor) gained LBC Sat in its advertising portfolio, Melody (whose advertising is managed by Antoine Choueiri, who also used to represent LBC) needs to respond to its competitor's improved sale capacity. If competing with Rotana, means stopping on-screen sms, then be it!

New licences in Kuwait

The Kuwaiti ministry of information approved 10 new licenses for daily political newspapers. Kuwait now has 28 political dailies! Out of which only 18 are actually published (15 in Arabioc and 3 in English)

The main newspapers are:
Al Balad
AnNasher
Al Akhbar
Al Kuwait
Al Zaman
Al La3eb