Even the few private ones mainly revolved around their officials. Fur- thermore, none of them were news channels. This boom was only a symbolic development in which Arab governments used the channels as a way to extend their narratives beyond borders and target their sup- porters; and the content remained the same. A study of Gulf satellite programmes between 26 October 1996 (before Al Jazeera’s launch by about a week) and 6 December 1996 (a month and five days after its launch) found that most fell under the entertainment category, and news programmes held the third ranking. The study included Saudi TV Chan- nel 1, Kuwait TV, Abu Dhabi TV, Dubai TV, Sharjah TV, Bahrain TV, and Oman TV.
Gulf Satellite Channel Programmes by Type (1) Programme Type Hours
Percentage (%)
Entertainment
308.57
36.4
Documentary Films, Culture and Development
166.50
19.8
News
126.62
14.9
Religious
68.73 54.98 47.00 23.02
8.1 6.5 5.5 2.7
Sports
Children
Advertisements
Unclassified 6.2 Al Jazeera was born during a time of monumental transformations on the international stage. The most prominent of these is what Abdel- wahab El-Affendi described as “the earthquake” that hit the region” in the early 1990s. This earthquake was the “destruction of Communism and the disintegration of what remained of Arab solidarity in the wake 52.49 (1) Abdellatif Aloofy, “What Makes Arabian Gulf Satellite TV Programs? A Comparative Analysis of the Volume, Origin, and Type of Program”, in The Information Revolution and the Arab World: Its Impact on State and Society , (Emirates Center for Strategic Studies & Re- search, 1998), p. 61-62.
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