Egypt: A season of morality and police uniforms | MadaMasr
▻https://www.madamasr.com/en/2018/06/24/feature/culture/a-season-of-morality-and-police-uniforms
Days ahead of this year’s Ramadan TV season, fans of Egyptian television sensed an impending crisis, one that played out with the sudden removal of several anticipated series from the 2018 schedule. Some of the issues cited, such as shooting delays, were familiar. What was different, however, was the extent of direct state interference in both the schedule and the content of the shows that were broadcast, contributing to what many have called the weakest Ramadan season in many years.
Though particularly insidious this year, this kind of state control did not emerge out of the blue, there have been indications of it over the past two years. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and other state bodies have issued a series of statements expressing their displeasure with the content of Egypt’s artistic works, criticizing TV series in particular. It seems these statements were initial steps toward cementing state control over Egypt’s media and culture industry, followed by the monopoly of state institutions and their business affiliates over the satellite TV channels considered to be the powerhouses of drama production. Most of these channels are now owned by state-acquired or affiliated production companies, namely Falcon, Egyptian Media Group and Eagle Capital, placing the production and broadcasting of TV series largely at their mercy.
The state took one step further with the creation of the Supreme Media Regulatory Council (SMRC) and its associated Drama Committee in 2016. The council swiftly started to exercise its stated mission of practicing post-screening censorship, instructing TV channels to cut certain scenes or lines of dialogue, despite them having already been approved by the Censorship Board, as happened with the popular series Sabea Gar (The Seventh Neighbor), which ran on CBC channel from October 2017 to March 2018.
It is not only through acquisitions and expanding the role of censorship authorities that the state has tried to influence Egypt’s TV landscape, it has also attempted to control the economy of drama production itself. For instance, producer Tamer Morsy of Synergy Productions had a stake in most of this past season’s TV series, while simultaneously holding the position of CEO of Egyptian Media Group, the current owner of ONtv network, and a shareholder of several other channels. In addition, the company entered into an agreement with a number of other channels not to sign any TV series with budgets exceeding LE70 million.