{"id":1955,"date":"2007-01-31T09:05:28","date_gmt":"2007-01-31T09:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=1955"},"modified":"2007-01-31T09:05:28","modified_gmt":"2007-01-31T09:05:28","slug":"2007-1-31-sawiris-enters-satellite-tv-market-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=1955","title":{"rendered":"Sawiris enters satellite TV market"},"content":{"rendered":"
Naguib Sawiris, Egypt’s top billionaire and around the 64th richest man in the world, has carried out something he has long been talking about and launched a satellite TV company. From a business briefing I receive:<\/p>\n

Mr. Naguib Sawiris announced the launch of a new satellite TV channel with a paid-in capital of USD17 million. The company seeks growth within the regional media production market, and plans to expand its ownership through an IPO once it starts to achieve reasonable profitability.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The FT had done a story on this in May 2006<\/a> where Sawiris explained he had political reasons for doing this too:<\/p>\n

The head of the Cairo-based Orascom Telecom Holdings, the region’s largest mobile telephone operator, is already majority-owner in two satellite television stations, Melody music and Melody films. He is now starting a third entertainment channel dedicated to young audiences and has applied for a licence to launch a 24-hour satellite news channel for Egypt’s domestic market.<\/p>\n

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Mr Sawiris is also expecting gradually to turn an Iraqi terrestrial general channel he owns into a broader regional satellite news channel to one day compete with the popular Qatar-based al-Jazeera and Saudi-owned al-Arabiya.<\/p>\n

The foray into satellite media, a field that, outside al-Jazeera, has been largely dominated by Saudis – Prince Waleed bin Talal, the high-profile international financier, has been building his own satellite media empire – appears to be driven by business as much as political motives.<\/p>\n

An outspoken secular businessman, with wealth estimated by Forbes Magazine at $2.6bn (€2bn, £1.4bn), Mr Sawiris wants to win the hearts of Arab youth by promoting a more liberal Arab society.<\/p>\n

“When I started Orascom I started a regional activity, and I believe I can replicate the story in media,” he said, on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum conference in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. “Here [in the Middle East], most stations are family-owned, royal-owned or government-owned.”<\/p>\n

The only hope for the region, he said, was a change in education to combat religious fundamentalism and extremism: “There is terrorism because they [young people] have nothing to look forward to.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While his opinion is laudable, I don’t think watching more episodes of Friends<\/em> is exactly the kind of character-building activity that lures young people away from terrorism. Hopefully, though, it’ll be better than the UAE\/Saudi dominated entertainment channels.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Naguib Sawiris, Egypt’s top billionaire and around the 64th richest man in the world, has carried out something he has long been talking about and launched a satellite TV company. From a business briefing I receive:<\/p>\n

Mr. Naguib Sawiris announced the launch of a new satellite TV channel with a paid-in capital of USD17 million. The company seeks growth within the regional media production market, and plans to expand its ownership through an IPO once it starts to achieve reasonable profitability.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The FT had done a story on this in May 2006<\/a> where Sawiris explained he had political reasons for doing this too:<\/p>\n

The head of the Cairo-based Orascom Telecom Holdings, the region’s largest mobile telephone operator, is already majority-owner in two satellite television stations, Melody music and Melody films. He is now starting a third entertainment channel dedicated to young audiences and has applied for a licence to launch a 24-hour satellite news channel for Egypt’s domestic market.
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\nMr Sawiris is also expecting gradually to turn an Iraqi terrestrial general channel he owns into a broader regional satellite news channel to one day compete with the popular Qatar-based al-Jazeera and Saudi-owned al-Arabiya.
\nThe foray into satellite media, a field that, outside al-Jazeera, has been largely dominated by Saudis – Prince Waleed bin Talal, the high-profile international financier, has been building his own satellite media empire – appears to be driven by business as much as political motives.
\nAn outspoken secular businessman, with wealth estimated by Forbes Magazine at $2.6bn (€2bn, £1.4bn), Mr Sawiris wants to win the hearts of Arab youth by promoting a more liberal Arab society.
\n“When I started Orascom I started a regional activity, and I believe I can replicate the story in media,” he said, on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum conference in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. “Here [in the Middle East], most stations are family-owned, royal-owned or government-owned.”
\nThe only hope for the region, he said, was a change in education to combat religious fundamentalism and extremism: “There is terrorism because they [young people] have nothing to look forward to.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While his opinion is laudable, I don’t think watching more episodes of Friends<\/em> is exactly the kind of character-building activity that lures young people away from terrorism. Hopefully, though, it’ll be better than the UAE\/Saudi dominated entertainment channels.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[60],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}