Arabic and Bridges TV

I’m well into winter break and getting rather bored. Not that there’s nothing to do, but I’m annoyingly unmotivated to do them. Time is running out, slowly but certainly each day, until I no longer have time to complete my postponed sewing projects or finishing the major housecleaning put off from all of Fall quarter. This frustration, though, should be the first step toward motivation, if my regular pattern holds.

I’ve been working on learning Arabic for the past few weeks. I’m still on the alphabet – not studying regularly due to this slothfulness that’s taken me over – and hope to get on to simple words by January, God willing. We’ll see. Last night I was playing with my laptop settings, figuring out how to write bilingually on the system. It turns out that Microsoft Office for OS X does not support Arabic. There’s no special download, it just doesn’t work. But Text Edit, Apple’s built in basic word processor, has support for Arabic script. I mucked around with that a while, but got absolutely confused by the layout; there’s a keyboard layout view, but I don’t know the alphabet well enough to decipher much of it, since the layout includes different forms of some letters and also emphasis markers. Eeek.

A couple of weeks ago a new satellite channel launched, the first American channel for a Muslim audience. I’ve not seen any of it yet – we have limited broadband access – but it sounds like it should be interesting. It’s certainly an ambitious project, which launched with 50,000 subscribers. What excites me the most about it is that their programming will come primarily from outside sources, including independent producers. This sounds like a good possible outlet for, for instance, the upcoming documentary in Morocco, as well as any number of ideas I have floating around. I’ll have to look into that possibility. In the meantime, you can check out the channel (and view it if you have broadband) at www.bridgestv.com.

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(from “NEW NETWORK HOPES TO BRIDGE CULTURE GAPS,” Manya A. Brachear, Chicago Tribune, 11/30/04)
But this is not the American Al Jazeera. Instead, call it Lifetime for Muslims, with a dash of CNN

The lineup includes an Emeril-like chef who can whip up Indonesian, Middle Eastern or South Asian fare; a soap opera about an Egyptian father dealing with his daughter's interfaith marriage; and a comedy show featuring shtick between a rabbi and a Palestinian-American.

"It is this kind of bridge-building situation that Bridges TV is all about," said Mo Hassan, founder and CEO of Bridges TV, which is based in Buffalo. "Foreign-language channels appeal primarily to the immigrant parent, not to their U.S.-born children. The programming of those channels is all about life back home. What Bridges TV is doing is programming...focused on life here in North America…"