Many who hang around here for the abuse I mete out recall that some months ago I rather beat up on a rather silly idea being pimped that a 'privatisation' of al Jazeerah would be a "good thing" - beat up as it clearly was based on naive and magical thinking about markets and specifically the MENA media market. I suppose a full service author would give you links, but I am not known for customer service.

[E: Lazy ass. Probably this one calling privatization a political fire sale. Also, a summary with article links]

Regardless, the issue discussed, including our very own compatriot waterboy and my own general whanking comment, is the issue of the reliability and scarcity of market data in MENA; particularly with respect to the issue of who is watching what. The 'leading' market data firm, Ipsos-Stat in particular seems to have undertaken a survey with perhaps some issues. Waterboy comments on them, I don't have a particular view (the 'leading' reference is disparaged simply as I know well in the MENA region such claims are worth the electrons they are made with - although Ipsos probably is leading) on the firm, however, at the same time, as I noted in comments, it would not surprise me if there were - even in the instance if the firm generally is high quality.

As I noted in the comment I left with the Father of Aardvarks, there is a 'brown paper envelope' issue that permeates business in the region - especially the Khalij but not uniquely - such things even effect data reporting, especially of the marketing kind. As an investment officer on some internet properties I was constantly confronted with what I was sure was a 'brown paper envelope' effect on some data reporting.

It's worse in some markets than others, but as I said at Bou Aradvrak in re Sat TV, some big swingers from the Gulf have sunk lots of cash into pet projects - private and public. Egos and prestige trump commercial factors in Sat TV market at present, and you're going to see a lot of influence peddling in that context, influence peddling in terms of advert placements, in terms of data on the market, etc.

My sense is that the radio markets, less prestigious and highly balkanised may be a bit cleaner, but radio markets are also less liberalised to date (all things being relative) and in most countries still very state dominated.

So, sadly from the business perspective it does not seem there are any strong positive trends commercially to produce good data on the Sat TV market, which means figuring out influence etc will have to be a guessing game.

As to the underlying article, I am afraid I don't find the critique of the market survey data based a presumed difference between what people say they watch and what they do watch a convincing argument for an al Arabiyah versus al Jazeerah market difference (I confess I like al Arabiyah better overall on a personal basis), it's more likely to show up in watching less news total than claimed.

I would add that the Father of Aardvarks' sense strikes me as accurate as a mere regional consumer (in exile, sadly)

My sense, based on the variety of survey evidence I've seen (including the Zogby/Telhami survey), is that the market is fragmenting. Even if nobody agrees on the exact distribution of market share, I think everyone can agree that the name of the game now is intense competition, not the kind of al-Jazeera near-hegemony of the late 1990s through 2003. Besides the region-wide challenge by al-Arabiya, it's about new stations emerge with particular appeal in a particular region: the Lebanese stations are strong in Lebanon, Abu Dhabi TV and Dubai TV strong in the UAE, and so forth. Al-Jazeera is still the one station which almost everybody watches, but it has at least one and often several strong challengers almost everywhere.

Certainly in the Maghreb the Moroccan channel 2M, which just went satellite, has potential for challenging given innovative programming and decent production values, as well as relatively good news (ex certain issues such as the Sahara and Algeria where you get time warped back to childish 1960sish agitprop). Tunisia and Algeria are atrocious though. Libya is delightfully bizarre (I remain convinced that the programmers for Libyan sat TV are heavy hashish users). This aside, the pan-Arab Sats are really Machriq 22/7 with the occasional recollection that there is more to the world than Palestine, Leb Land, Iraq, and the Khalij.