Abstract | Television in the 2020s is a far cry from the old days of broadcasting. From a mass medium transmitted into the family home it has become a ‘highly interactive medium of interpersonal communication and social networking’ (Turner and Tay 2009, p4). To understand what television means in the Middle East today requires us to consider everything from broadband access and smartphone penetration to local use of video-sharing platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat, along with the reach of ‘over-the-top’ (OTT) players who provide subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) by internet and include local players as well as US-owned giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Yet, for all the changes in delivery, some continuities remain. This chapter examines structural shifts and rigidities in each of five ‘components’ of the medium as identified by Johnson (2019). |
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