Could an Islamic children’s TV program make it big in the Middle East?

The children’s television market in the Middle East was estimated at $600 million in 2014. With 34 percent of the region’s population under the age of 14 and with the success of several values-based and Islamic-themed channels, what are the opportunities for media companies to develop new Islamic content for children?

Television is the most popular media in the Middle East. Arabs watched 13 percent more TV per day than viewers in Europe and 53 percent more than in the Asia Pacific, according to a 2014 study on Arab TV audiences by Copenhagen University Assistant Professor Ehab Galal.

Children represent a sizeable viewer segment in the region, with 34 percent of the population below the age of 14, and totaling 118 million, based on World Bank estimates for 2014.

MARKET SIZE

The global television market was estimated at $371 billion in 2014, and projected to grow at 3.8 percent CAGR through 2019, according to PwC estimates of pay TV, public licence fees and advertising revenues.

The children’s television market can be estimated at $37 billion in 2014, assuming the children’s share of the total global television market is the same as that of the U.S., which was 10 percent as estimated by IBISWorld in a 2015 report on the Television Production Industry (based on same criteria as PwC’s estimate for the global TV market).

The Middle East’s children’s television market was an estimated $600 million in 2014, based on the region’s share of the children’s television market in line with its proportion of the global Media and Recreation industry (1.6 percent based on International Comparison Program and DinarStandard estimates).

KEY PLAYERS

Industry recognition for the segment came with the 1990s boom of the Pan Arab satellite television market that made foreign content easily accessible to the younger demographic. 

Nickelodeon Arabia and Disney both entered the Mideast market in the mid-90s. Regional broadcasters faced competition for the first time and started reaching out to the long ignored children audience, who till then were being served cheap live shows and dubbed western content. The first homegrown channel to join the fray was Spacetoon in 2000.

The MENA children’s television market further revolutionized in the mid-2000s, when the market leader MBC Group launched its own children’s channel MBC3. It primarily carried windowed programming from the west but also included licensed Arabic-dubbed shows.

In 2005, Al Jazeera entered the niche with a $100 million annual budgeted children’s channel.

RELIGIOUS AND VALUES-BASED PROGRAMMING

There is significant scope for values-based programming in the Middle East, with 50 percent of parents surveyed in the region believing that television helps in instilling local culture and values in children, according to primary research by the Communications and Media Research Institute in 2015.

Iftah Ya Simsim, the Arabized version of Sesame Street that debuted in the Arab world in 1979, is a case in point. It gained wide recognition as the first educational TV show in the Arab world.

Broadcasted from Kuwait, the show ran into trouble with the onslaught of the Gulf War and ceased broadcasting from 1990. But after 25 years, it garnered enough interest to be considered for a re-launch by the Arab Bureau of Education for the Gulf States, the GCC Joint Program Production Institute, and Abu Dhabi’s twofour54, securing funding in the process.

The series was telecasted in September 2015, after intense deliberations involving educational and media specialists from the region, who helped in its regional adaptation. The program addresses pressing regional issues for its young audience, such as obesity and illiteracy through its signature edutainment.

Noura Al Kaabi, CEO of media free zone twofour54, where the series is being created, commented in a LinkedIn article that bringing back the series is vital in the present time when children are accessing more non-Arab content and the use of the Arabic language is declining.

Religious institutions have also discovered the importance of TV in reaching out to young audiences.

Salafi-oriented Almajd TV Network, owned by Saudi businessman Abdur-Rahman Ashmemri, was the early entrant launching Al-Majd Kids Channel in 2009.

This was followed in 2010 by Saudi-based Semsem, Iranian-supported Hodhod TV, and Taha TV, based on a report released by the Gulf Research Centre of the University of Cambridge in 2012.

Most Islamic channels claim to be offering edutainment rather than purely religious content. Al-Majd for instance contends that its programs are selected for their educational value.

Nonetheless, most of its programming has a strong Islamic undertone. The programming grid of these channels include varied genres, from studio-based formats to religious songs (nashids).

Hodhod TV from Iran, for instance, promotes informative spots on Shia beliefs such as stories on Shia imams, says IBID research.

However, there have also been failures, with children’s channels both religious and mainstream exiting the field. Noor al-Islam, a children’s religious channel closed its operation in 2009 switching to webcasting; Palestinian Islamic channel Yoya fared the same fate.

Even mainstream players like Nickelodeon Arabia, which was re-launched in 2008, ceased operations in 2011 claiming bankruptcy.

Webcasting platforms are also being used now, and Muslim Kids TC, which has over 200 videos as well as edutainment games, is one such initiative with an aim to provide “clean, moral, values-based entertainment” for children.