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Soap operas clean up on lucrative Ramadan market
by Riad Abu AwadFri Sep 22, 1:42 PM ET
Egypt has long been the acknowledged leader in producing soap operas for broadcast during Ramadan, but this year its dominance is challenged by Syria, with both countries banking on plotlines based on news events.
The sacred month is traditionally marked by long evenings at home when families break their fast, and this year Egypt has produced 50 TV series for the captive audience of Ramadan with Syria running a close second at 45.
In addition to transmission on home networks, the challenge for production companies is to sell their soaps abroad, especially to Arabic-language satellite channels that are widely watched throughout the Middle East.
Syria has so far managed to sell 25 soap operas on this lucrative market, according to Syrian producer Hatem Ali.
In Egypt, one of the three main production houses has sold the broadcast rights for 12 of its 23 soaps already in the can, and negotiations are continuing on another 15 ahead of the start of Ramadan this weekend.
Critics believe the Syrian-Egyptian face-off on the small screen will best be illustrated by storylines shot by TV heavyweights focusing on hot news topics.
In "The Heathens," Syria's Najdat Anzour tackles Islamist groups responsible for terrorist attacks in various Arab capitals and in London. Every three episodes, the action moves from one city to another.
"Al-Hilali's Way," by Egypt's Mohammed Fadel, is about a politician whose obscure past -- notably in the form of forged papers -- catches up with him.
It is built around celebrated actor Yehya al-Fakrani, and will remind viewers of the Ayman Nur affair. Nur, a candidate for the Egyptian presidency in 2005, was jailed for five years for falsifying documents.
In Egypt, where one company has also produced a historical religious drama called "Imam Al-Maraghi" this year, the studios tend to count on stars whose names alone are enough to attract viewers.
But this tactic has not been entirely successful in recent years, which have seen the failure of major productions tailored for stars such as Fakrani or the actress Yusra.
"These soaps are written to please the stars ... instead of attracting advertisers," according to critic Sayyed Mahmoud.
Reassured by their dominance of the market, some Egyptian production companies have also taken to ignoring detail and being somewhat lax when it comes to the technical and artistic levels of their television productions.
So Syrian producers saw an opportunity and stepped into the breach, taking on the task of satisfying unhappy clients, and reversing the decline in viewing figures.
They came up with a large number of soaps filmed in classical Arabic to attract wider audiences in countries where the Syrian Arabic dialect is not understood.
But if in these two countries the plotlines and the actors are given wide exposure in the media, the production houses themselves tend to keep one thing very close to their chests: the revenue raked in by the soaps, which according to industry insiders is worth millions of dollars annually.
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