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TV Orient now on Comcast

Regional channel focuses on Arab issues

By Christopher M. Singer / The Detroit News
Image
Max Ortiz / The Detroit News

Anchor Natiq Elia has worked for decades here and abroad. He said TV Orient news focuses on the Middle East.

Who's watching

* Metro Detroit is home to about 500,000 people of Middle Eastern descent.

* An estimated 10,000 businesses in Metro Detroit are owned by Arab Americans.

* One in three Arab Americans -- 36.3 percent -- hold college degrees or advanced degrees. Only one in five of all Americans -- 20.3 percent -- has a college degree.

* TV Orient, via satellite dish, reaches viewers in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Persons of Middle Eastern descent in North America have an annual buying power estimated to be $5.5 billion. Arab-Americans living in Metro Detroit account for $2.6 billion in annual spending.

Source: TV Orient

DEARBORN — Talk about your electronic global village.

TV Orient, a television channel in Southfield that locally produces programming aimed at Arab-American viewers, has been added to Comcast Digital on Channel 667.

Once available three hours a day and only by satellite dish, the 18-year-old channel has expanded its programming to 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is now available to an estimated half-million viewers of Middle Eastern descent in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Washtenaw and Genessee counties.

“We like that it’s available on Comcast,” said Alia Al-Mayahi, a Dearborn resident and TV Orient viewer. “If you express it as a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a six or a seven. I like it as an Arabic channel that tells us what we don’t see on the other channels.

“We watch the shows they do right here. Sometimes, we watch the news, the specials, when they interview somebody important.”

According to station owner Wally Jadan, TV Orient also is available, via dish, to viewers in Canada and Mexico. In Metro Detroit, fiber optic cabling links TV Orient to Comcast Digital. Altogether, that’s 3.5 million households in North America, Jadan said, with a combined annual buying power of $5.5 billion.

“Our goal is to cover the globe,” Jadan said. “I’m hoping to reach the Arab world (Middle East) in 2004.”

That’s incentive enough to attract advertisers like Shore Mortgage, PaineWebber, Ramada Inn Hotels, Henry Ford Health Systems and DTE Energy.

“Right now, it’s a very niche market,” said the channel’s marketing manager, Michael Dunlop.

Dunlop added that he expects marketing to Arab-Americans to grow just as niche marketing to Hispanics has grown.

Jadan is proudest of his news operation.

“We cover every event related to the community,” he said. “The issues we tackle, they don’t see it on American TV. Covering the local news is important.

“It’s important to them to hear local news.”

The news format includes international, national and local news, a weather report and a sports report by Nadhir Zoma, who is also director of marketing for the Michigan Soccer Association.

TV Orient recently telecast a live interview with the president of the new Iraqi Governing Council, Dr. Ebrahim Jafari Al-Eshaiker.

The station was in Dearborn covering the dancing in the streets after Saddam Hussein was captured in Iraq by U.S. troops and was recently in Hamtramck covering some clashes between Arab-American students and African-American students at Hamtramck High School.

News anchor Natiq Elia, a TV journalist for 23 years in the United States and a TV newsman in Iraq for 15 years before that, put it this way:

“On American TV, the news is 95 percent about America and 5 percent about the Middle East. Here, our news shows are 5 percent about America and 95 percent about the Middle East.”

Programming is broadcast in English, Arabic and the ancient language Aramaic. Aramaic still is spoken by Chaldeans who are Iraqi Roman Catholics.

Programming also includes movies in Arabic, soap operas in Arabic, videos by popular Middle Eastern entertainers and shows on health, personal investing and real estate.

Jadan, 50, is of Chaldean heritage. He came to the United States from Iraq 30 years ago. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Oakland University.

TV Orient has broadcast since 1986.

“I used to own an insurance agency and real estate firm located in the same office building as TV Orient,” Jadan said.

In 1996, he bought the channel along with the ethnic programming radio station 690-AM

“Radio, it’s just to support the TV,” Jadan said. “Arab-Americans, they like to watch the TV.”

Jadan has 30 workers, both full time and part time, plus a corps of volunteers from the Metro Detroit Middle Eastern community. His studios are in Southfield.

Jadan was asked if there might be some resistance from other Americans who come across Arab programming while channel-surfing their way through Comcast Digital.

“They must know that America is a melting pot of people from everywhere on earth,” he said. “We are the window to the Middle East. We are bridge builders.”

You can reach Christopher M. Singer at (313) 561-8623 or csinger@detnews.com.

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