The Arab world is so addicted to television that western ideas are starting to transform Arab culture at a pace that might be too fast, says Dr. Morris Kalliny, a researcher at Missouri University of Science and Technology, according to Breaking News 24/7. “There has been a transition from state-controlled media to almost complete freedom when it comes to accessing information. People are still trying to figure out how to handle it,” the expert added.

Kalliny, who conducts research on advertising and media in the Arab world, observes that most Arabs who can afford a satellite dish have one in their yard. The lack of regulations in this domain has led to thousands of channels becoming available free of charge. Similarly, it benefits the economic development of the industry in the region.

While the economic downturn has jolted the region’s media industry, it has also triggered changes that were long overdue, comments Sam Potter for the Kipp Report. The UAE and Saudi Arabia recorded a downturn in ad revenue (of 6 and 8 percent respectively), and other countries made up for this with significant growth.

According to Potter, the past two years delivered the notion of buying media based on budget power and monopolizing the media space, but 2009 ushered in a culture of wanting to verify the spends and understand how it actually delivers on the bottom line.

Experts argue that younger generations tend to embrace technology and western ideas, while older Arabs are more conservative. “It’s really not much different than in the US. You’re going to get two extremes,” says Kalliny for Breaking News 24/7. And while culturally sensitive materials such as pornography are inaccessible over the internet in some Arab countries, the expert contends that they can be found on satellite TV.

However, Faisal Al-Qasim, journalist for Gulf News, believes that the huge number of Arab satellite TV channels generates confusion on what to watch, and who is who in the television industry. “Over the past decade or so, Arab society has been afflicted with what you could call 'satellite TV diarrhoea,'” he remarks.

According to Al-Qasim, the satellite industry has become a sort of melting pot for people seeking business interests at the price of good quality programming, flooding the airwaves with below-average cultural programs that are not going to help the young generation.

An Omani reader agrees with the author. He comments that although the digital satellite era has opened up a new world for television viewers, it does not really lead to the healthy growth of children, who spend a good amount of their time in front of the television sets.

While Al-Qasim deplores the fact that satellite TV stations continue to proliferate, he remarks, “It is difficult to find an Arab investor who has done a thorough feasibility study for the channel that he or she wants to launch.” He explains that most of the hundreds of Arab satellite TV channels have been launched by financiers without knowledge, experience or understanding of the industry, thus accounting for the launch of more than 500 channels over the past ten years.

He further points out that for every fifty channels closed down annually, another fifty are launched, while Arab viewers tend to watch just a couple of news channels, three or four music stations, two or three drama channels and a couple of religious channels regularly. The rest of the channels are superfluous.

Restriction and better regulations have come to play a useful role among the rise and fall of channels that have no valuable intellectual or cultural content. Al-Qasim concludes that if Arab viewers had difficulty keeping track of programming before, today most viewers simply do not know about the other satellite channels.