I’m not much of a TV fan, can barely fit in 30 minutes to spend in front of the TV before dozing off. Yet things weren’t the same during my teenage years, our culture is by nature addicted to electronic media- specially our good friend the television, movies and (recently) TV fill most of many teenagers’ worlds, and now it (alongside the computer, video games or other media) babysit our children, very few can deny delegating the responsibility on such things.

I overhear them all the time, at work, by the water-cooler in the gym, or even the discussions up on the local forums about the recent episode of Prison Break, or that of Lost; now families will sit around the TV waiting for the episode of Opera or Dr. Phil to discuss it with their colleagues or co-workers the next morning, with such great passion and dedication. I’ve even seen arguments and thorough discussions as to who is it to blame and how the same story happened to someone they know.

We really can’t help it at the end of the day, our opinions are molded by television, the age of civilization based on reading on a written literature, is over. Hours could pass by, our eyes delighted by the flashing colors and attractive TV personalities as our minds process the scenes (Though the Internet can also bring information into the home, it still lacks TV’s drama and the ease of use) what could be easier than simply pressing ON?

Just because people spend so much of their free time watching television, the medium has an enormous cultural effect. No other single factor of our present-day civilization not the educational system or religion or science or the arts is so all-pervasive, so influential, so totally accessible to and shared by all individuals in society as is the world presented by television!

And what television we have around this part of the world; I had enough with our lame local media productions; I can’t take any more of those Egyptian series that all look and sound the same, or those pointless Khaleejy ones that depicts our society as a shallow and narrow minded one, filled with drugs where everybody drives around in luxury cars and dresses up in fancy clothes in what can only explained as a despicable but still lucrative way to make a series. I can’t take any more of those supposedly “funny” episodes of clowning around by Dawood Hussain or AlBlam, and I honestly can’t wait and hope for another local media series as good as Firjan Lawal or AlBait Al Owd, and none of those packaged distorted religious historical series that depict barbaric and blood thirsty dictators as symbols and marks in the “golden era” of Islam. It’s about time we are exposed to proper Arabic dialect (through the translation) and not the common Khaleejy or Egyptian one.

It’s about time we free our youth from the control of the public and the “supposedly” child safe perfect world we keep them in and get real television; it’s about time we are exposed to such rich culture and get a glimpse of how the real world works beyond the borders of our countries, or the constraints and filters of local traditions and customs that did nothing but hold us back the past years.

Thank you for real television, thank you MBC2!