New Saudi TV station feeds into modernisation drive

Riyadh

SAUDI Arabia's ambitious reform drive takes another step forward this week, with the launch of a new public TV channel that seeks to draw young viewers and project a modern image beyond the kingdom's borders.

Branded "SBC", the channel will broadcast exclusive content including films, talk shows and cooking programmes. The move follows the launch earlier this month of a US$35 billion drive to turn Saudi Arabia into a culture and entertainment hub by 2020.

"This is a general channel that's seeking to attract the new generation of Saudis," said the station's director Dawood Shirian, a frank-talking TV personality who previously hosted a talk show tapping into the public's gripes. "Most of the content, about 75 per cent, is geared toward the youth between 15 and 35 years old."

Mr Shirian added that SBC would "complement the changes seen in the kingdom in the artistic, cultural and entertainment spheres".

Mr Shirian was poached late last year from private rival MBC to head up the state-run Saudi Broadcasting Corporation, and to mastermind the launch of SBC. The move was seen as a deliberate shock for the state broadcaster - one in a series of radical changes guided by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

The 32-year-old heir to the Saudi throne, who declared to foreign investors in Riyadh last October that his generation of Saudis "want to live a normal life", is seen as the guiding hand behind the lifting of longstanding social restrictions. The kingdom last year announced a decades-long ban on women driving would be lifted - a decision slated to take effect on June 24.

Like Saudi Arabia's nascent entertainment industry, which aims to convince citizens to spend their riyals at home instead of in Dubai or Bahrain, SBC is positioning itself as a magnet for hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising money.

"As it stands, 90 per cent of these budgets are going outside Saudi Arabia, and this channel's mission is to repatriate that money, along with (skilled) young Saudis," said Mr Shirian.

SBC will become the entertainment flagship for the Saudi Broadcasting Corporation, whose portfolio also includes two channels dedicated to Quran readings and education and news-dedicated channel Al-Ekhbariya. Channel 1, which broadcasts public programming, will remain, "but is geared more for the older generation", said Mr Shirian.

Last week, SBC said in a statement that its programming aimed to "keep pace with the spirit of development and renewal launched by the kingdom's Vision 2030... to promote the spirit of openness... and reject extremist thought".

"Our goal is to have a very strong launch," said production and programming director Fahad Shalil, adding that the venture "will compete with the top channels".

SBC's launch is timed to coincide with Ramadan, a holy month for Muslims, but a period when families tend to gather in the evenings to watch television, after breaking the fast.

In Dubai, SBC has launched a campaign with the slogan "You are forced to love it", a play on words, because Saudis in the past would joke they were forced to watch limited state programmes. The Rotana group replied in a Tweet "You can't force love".

MBC chief Walid Al-Ibrahim and Rotana's Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal were among the hundreds of high-profile Saudis detained over alleged corruption last year, their clout and businesses put on the line.

Rumours have swirled that the media titans were pressured to hand over major stakes in those channels in order to secure their release. Those reports have never been confirmed. AFP