Much may divide the older generation from the young in the Middle East, but one thing still links them. Older people can tell you how they were glued to their radio sets to listen to the BBC Arabic Service. The younger generation is also relying on the service, but their relation to it has gone beyond radio - it has become electronic. For them, browsing the BBC Arabic website has become a habit, much as it was a habit for their fathers and mother to listen to the distinctive Arabic accents of the BBC broadcasters.
Started in 1938, BBC Arabic is the oldest and largest of the broadcaster's 43 foreign language services. From its beginning, the head of the service was always British but this year, an Arab has at last been appointed head.
In the press release announcing the appointment, the acting director of the BBC World Service Nigel Chapman said it was the "key to implementing current BBC Arabic strategy, one of whose aims is to greatly strengthen the ties between BBC News and the Arabic service."
Hosam El Sokkari, who was born and educated in Egypt, is the former head of the BBC online website.
Today El Sokkari is in charge of both online and radio sections - giving his place as head of online service to another staff member, an opportunity, he says, to give others the opportunity to add new things to the service. "A new person with a fresh pair of eyes would be able to spot things I probably cannot spot," he said.
Revising the products of the Arabic Service could be a beginning. Though the basic core values of the BBC are still there, there is always room for change. The first thing in his schedule is to "step back a little bit and have an overlook of what we produce." El Sokkari says. To him the service is not bound to the device that people receive their information on. The Arabic Service does not mean radio or computers - it is an information package that can be delivered in different ways, whether audio on computers radio, text on web pages and or as "short crispy" headlines delivered to mobile phones or even SMS messages. Delving into modern technologies to deliver information can be a way of attracting the younger generation, and that change is bound to be reflected in the radio productions.
It is not a matter of replacing the old with the new, El Sokkari says; rather, it is giving a fresh look to the products at hand. Keeping the heritage of BBC Arabic goes hand in hand with making it easy for consumption. "I would not be too happy if people liked us as guardians of language and culture but put us in a glass cage and looked at us without consuming our products."
A consumer-driven approach marks El Sokkari's strategy; the best way, he feels, to ensure people have respect for the service but at the same time see it as contemporary and up to date.
With the soaring competition in the news channels on TV and Radio, the BBC still enjoys a large audience. Research numbers 11 million listeners, in the Middle East not counting those who listen to the news on the Internet. In the Gulf, where TV rules supreme, El Sokkari insists that people tune in to the Arabic Service while driving home. The service started broadcasting on FM in Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
During the Iraq war the interactive programs drew lots of listeners and caught the imagination many in the Arab World. The programs generated vibrant debates on the radio and online.
But was that only during the war? El Sokkari says that interactive programs go beyond the war. Programs were developed to include youth and sports programs, with topics ranging from politics - the Palestinian issue looms large - to social ones such as marriage in the Middle East and the "Arab mentality": "Anything that people feel like discussing in a way that is slightly different than the usual way these subjects are dealt with in the ME," he says.
The interactive programs are supported with an online interface, so that discussions can go on simultaneously on the web and on radio, as well as through SMS messages and e-mails, giving people a "complete information meal that can be interacted with on a number of platforms."
This idea is taken to even higher levels with a multi-interactive offer: programs running on two TV stations, two radio channels and two Internet sites. The pilot was a program that ran live on Kuwait TV on terrestrial and satellite channels, on Kuwait FM and BBC radio, also broadcast on Arabic service online and Kuwaiti Al-Arabi magazine website.
Though the competition from other Arab TV news channels is fierce, El Sokkari reminds us that all these channels evolved from the BBC TV experience between 1994-96,whose contribution was to offer "expertise that formed the basis of most of these channels."
Coming closer to the region is high on the agenda. It started with the creation of a production center in Cairo during the Iraq war; other smaller center might be in line.
Hosam El Sokkari was born and educated in Egypt. He worked in Finland and Germany as a cartoonist and newspaper journalist before joining Deutsche Welle as a correspondent in 1988. He joined the Arabic service in 1994. In 1999 he was appointed head of BBC Arabic Online.
