Abstract
Slowly but surely over the past few years, London has been losing its status as unchallenged capital of the pan-Arab media. Some important players on the London Arab media scene have moved out, either wholly or in part. Those that remain are being eclipsed by newer outlets based in the region, or challenged by changing media production and consumption patterns in the Arab world. Others have waned, or wound up completely. The factors that combined to turn the British capital into a magnet for the Arab media – money, technology, expertise and political conditions – are nowadays having something of a reverse effect. There is still an enormous amount of Arab media activity around. But while London was central to the emergence of a pan-Arab daily press and the proliferation of transnational Arabic publications from the late 1970s to the 1990s, it is a relatively modest participant in the pan-Arab media’s current satellite TV-led and entertainment-oriented booms. So, what has changed over the years? Not much about Britain as host, but plenty about the Arab media and the environment in which they operate. London’s stint as their hub can be seen as having marked a transition between two stages in the development of the pan-Arab media: the Lebanese phase, when the Beirut press and publishing industry acted as a kind of pan-Arab media by proxy, and the al-Jazeera era with concomitant relaxation of media controls in many Arab countries.
Published Version
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