ON SEPTEMBER 6, the first privately owned Egyptian terrestrial television channel went live at 5pm local time, offering seven hours of daily general-interest content leavened with some current affairs programming.

The only catch was that Nahrain TV, fully owned by billionaire telecommunications magnate Naguib Sawiris, went live from its base in Baghdad, not Cairo.

The channel is called Nahrain (two rivers), in reference to Iraq’s Euphrates and Tigris. It offers news, hard-hitting investigative programs, films, series, music shows and children’s programs. The channel’s in-house productions are driven by local Iraqi tastes and culture, with a focus on “optimistic aspects of life in Iraq,” according to a company statement.

Nahrain’s signal is strongest in the Iraqi capital and surrounding cities. Since the beginning of Ramadan, it has extended its broadcast time to 12 hours a day.

Sawiris heads Orascom Telecom (OT), the largest GSM mobile network operator in the Middle East and Africa. Through OT, Sawiris leads the consortium that operates Iraqna (Our Iraq), one of that country’s first three mobile phone networks. Contrary to some media reports, Sawiris holds Nahrain through a holding company called Hawwa, not through OT.

According to Hassan Abu El Ela, Nahrain’s network director and a former BBC journalist, the channel is working hard to strike a balance between hard and soft news reporting in Iraq.

Ashraf Talaat / Egypt Today Nahrain CEO Hassan Abdo expects the new Iraqi broadcaster won’t hit the break-even point until 2008, noting the insurgency is the biggest obstacle to growth.

“The channel cares about anything that preoccupies the Iraqi citizen in his daily life. Iraq is not only a battlefield; there is life there. There is violence and killing, but there is also marriage, education, theatre You can see tanks uprooting militants on one side of the road and a wedding parade on the other and you should not be surprised at that. We’re trying to reflect that accurately and objectively,” Abu El Ela says.

The director is adamant that the channel, which broadcasts less than two hours of hard news each day, enjoys 100 percent editorial independence.

“No one interferes with the content of our news bulletin and no one imposes anything on us, not the Iraqi government, not Americans and not the owner of the channel. Our editorial policy is based on accuracy and objectivity,” Abu El Ela claims.

The company has provided its 150 staff members, most of whom are Iraqis, with the latest technology and state-of-the-art broadcast equipment, the company says. “It is a true Iraqi channel. It benefits from Egyptian expertise and capital, but it is Iraqis who are the real executives of the project,” says Abu El Ela.

Still, the director admits that critics may have a point when they claim that Nahrain devotes little time to field reports given the wealth of news events in Iraq. The budget constraints that hem in most start-ups have limited Nahrain to 18 reporters and 10 stringers to cover the entire nation, and Abu El Ela says the broadcaster is still having problems attracting highly qualified Iraqis.

In the meantime, Abu El Ela says he views the channel as a bid to spread Egyptian culture in a part of the Arab world previously dominated by Lebanese and Saudi programming.

“This is the first Egyptian channel outside Egypt,” he says. “I am not there only for news, but I am bringing Iraqis back to Egyptian movies and TV series. At least three of Nahrain’s daily transmissions are dedicated to Egyptian media products.” The channel also airs daily news reports as well as cultural and entertainment programs produced in Cairo.

According to Nahrain CEO Hassan Abdo, Sawiris’ Hawwa company, which owns and operates the channel, was granted its license in March 2004 after spending six months convincing the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority and the interim Iraqi government that its bid met all the technical and financial requirements.

“They wanted to make sure our transmission could reach different parts of Iraq over a specific period of time and that is what we are actually working on; our transmission will cover all of Iraq within the coming 12 months,” Abdo says. “They also wanted to make sure we had enough capital to maintain this channel Mr. Sawiris perceives Iraq as a ground for long-term investment; we’re here to stay.”

The project’s initial budget is $25 million for the first five years of operations, but Abdo says he doesn’t expect to hit the break-even point before 2008.

“I don’t think we will reach our break-even before four to five years, unless Iraqi elections take place in January, a true peace is achieved and the Iraqi economy blossoms,” he adds.

The growing insurgency is the biggest obstacle to profitability, Abdo says. Although the company claims no Nahrain staffer has yet been targeted by insurgents, eight Iraqna staffers were taken hostage in September; the last two were released in late October as Egypt Today went to press. (See story page 31.)

Of Nahrain’s 150 staff, at least 30 are employed as security guards, Abdo says.

A number of Iraqi retailers inked Ramadan advertising deals soon after Nahrain went live, but the September abductions raised doubts among many Iraqi business leaders about whether Egyptian investors had the stomach to remain in the war-torn country, Abdo says.

“Advertisers got scared, especially because most experts expected the situation to become worse during the month of Ramadan. Advertisers don’t want to spend money without being sure of the benefit, so they told us, ‘We’ll wait until the situation becomes much clearer,’” Abdo says.

At press time, only sister companies Orascom Telecom and Iraqna were advertising on Nahrain.

Still, the company is convinced that being among Iraq’s few terrestrial broadcasters will give it an edge with advertisers in a nation where satellite access is still relatively low.

“Nahrain is unique because it is a terrestrial channel that anyone with a TV set can watch. If it were only transmitted via satellite, no more than one third of Baghdad’s population [would have access],” says Abdo, explaining that Nahrain’s market research suggests only 30 percent of Iraqis in the nation’s capital have satellite dishes.

While still low by Egyptian standards, the 30 percent penetration rate is three times the figure in the days immediately after the American invasion, when the Baathist regime’s outright ban on private satellite dishes was consigned to the dustbin of history.

Today, many Iraqis openly admit they no longer watch free-to-air terrestrial TV.

“Most Iraqis watch satellite channels now; we were deprived of them for many years,” says Omar Kamal, a 21-year-old undergraduate student who rushed to buy a satellite dish three days after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. “Very few people still hang onto terrestrial channels.

“I would recommend that [Nahrain] move to satellite transmission and focus on fresh programming,” adds Kamal, who admits he has never tuned into the new channel.

Iraq witnessed a boom in satellite broadcasters after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Many of them are US-funded, including Al-Iraqiya, a Pentagon-funded channel with both terrestrial and satellite signals that acts as the nation’s official broadcaster. Al-Iraqiya offers US perspectives that its backers say are part of a bid to counter “anti-American” coverage offered by pan-Arab heavyweights Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiyya.

Al-Hurra, or “The Free One,” the US State Department’s much-ridiculed satellite broadcaster, serves a similar purpose.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi media tycoon launched Al-Sharqiya in June as the country’s first privately owned satellite TV channel. Al-Sharqiya, up and running with an initial $13 million cash infusion, is primarily an entertainment channel, though it offers news programming and a weekly satirical review of the interim government.

Sama Al-Hashimy, a graduate student at the University of Baghdad, says she always tunes in to Al-Iraqiya or Al-Sharqiya for domestic news. While Al-Iraqiya has a terrestrial frequency, Al-Hashimy watches it only on satellite.

“Many of us are buying satellite dishes, particularly since prices have begun to fall. Most of us have even removed our terrestrial antennas,” she claims.

Nahrain seems aware of the challenge satellite broadcasts will present. Company officials say they are considering launching a satellite frequency to beam Iraqi programming to the rest of the Arab world as well as to Iraqi expatriates. Still, Abdo says, the core business remains for the moment, at least terrestrial broadcasting.

“We want to focus on Iraq, its problems and its people,” he says, “to be a true Iraqi channel; but if we go on satellite, we will be like any other satellite channel. You’re much stronger when you can tell your advertisers that you reach 25 million Iraqis [once the signal reaches nationwide]. When you tell them, ‘I am like any other satellite TV channel,’ what would encourage them to advertise on your channel in particular?”  et