Virginity soap?

byHabib Battah
Jan 12, 2013

This is a screen grab of a commercial on Kunuz Al-Jannah channel.

It’s one of hundreds of stations on the Arab satellite distributor Nilesat that have absolutely no programing, except for a steady stream of clipart slides, selling skin cream–including breast enlargement cream:

And some sort of marriage counseling:

The slides change every 10 seconds or so. Meanwhile the audio is a mix of religious music and Koran reading. Occasionally a booming voice interrupts to say “Koran TV.”

For more on the hundreds of these electronic-billboard-like channels that dominate the Arab satellite TV dial, see my recent Bold Magazine column “A thousand channels and nothing is on“

Habib Battah

Habib Battah is an investigative journalist and founder of the news site beirutreport.com. Battah has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 15 years and teaches journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a contributor to Monocle, The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others, a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and two-time recipient of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. Battah's investigative work was recently recognized for outstanding local reporting by the Columbia University Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting. Battah earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Near East Studies and Journalism from New York University.