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ramadan.. time for tales on tv
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Ramadan
Time for tall tales on television
Sep 4th 2008 |
From The Economist print edition
The Muslim month of fasting allows for ever-juicier television fare at night
IN RAMADAN’s past, pious Muslims in the big cities of the Middle East waited, in the hush before sunset, for the sound of a cannon shot, followed by the cry of “Allahu Akbar!” from a nearby mosque, to break their day-long fast. Now, during the month-long fasting period, families tune instead to their televisions. As the broadcast call to prayer declares the start of another night of furious eating and alcohol-free drinking, so it heralds a visual feast.
Satellite television has taken off in the region like nowhere else. In wealthy
The sated lassitude that overtakes fasters after their sunset meal, the long hours of darkness and the fact that many sleep during daytime to reduce the rigours of the fast combine to make the 30 days of Ramadan, which started this year on September 1st, prime viewing time. The month takes up as much as half the annual production budgets of some networks and generates a similar proportion of advertising revenue. Competition for airtime in the season has grown fiercer. With its 80-year-old cinema industry, skilled crews and big studios,
This year’s diversity of Ramadan fare is more bewildering than ever. Armchair zappers can flick between some 25 fresh drama serials, a batch of new sitcoms, a score of religious Ramadan specials, celebrity chat-fests and reality shows, each with daily episodes stretching across the fasting month. The biggest, in terms of budget and audience, are the costume dramas. Current programmes are set in everything from 8th-century
This year competition to lure audiences is coming from another quarter. In a garish real-life drama, a billionaire Egyptian property mogul, Hisham Talaat Mustafa, has been charged with hiring a hit man to kill a willowy Lebanese starlet, Suzanne Tamim, who was found in July, in a posh flat in