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ARABIC TELEVISION

Start an Arabic TV channel, after the satellite dish.

A 24/7 channel with dramas and talk on a schedule, Quran in the morning, a Ramadan grid built ahead, and Arabic rendered right to left, natively. On the web player and the living-room TV, delivered from 300+ cities.

Step by step

How to start an Arabic TV channel

The audience spans Dearborn, Toronto, London, Paris and Sydney, and the dish that used to serve it is disappearing from the balconies. The replacement is a channel on the smart TV and the phone.

  1. Build the library you have rights to

    Your own productions, community coverage, licensed dramas, devotional recordings and talk shows go into the library. Tag by series and dialect as they land, and the guide has something to list.

  2. Grid the week for your community

    One schedule serves Dearborn, Toronto, London, Paris and Sydney. Pick the region the evening block is built for, then repeat it at evening hours for the others. Tag each show by dialect so the guide can say who it is for.

  3. Put Arabic on screen, right to left, natively

    Lower thirds, tickers and titles render RTL correctly with your own fonts uploaded on higher plans. The channel should read like Arabic television from the first frame.

  4. Prepare the Ramadan grid before the month

    Build the seasonal schedule ahead in the browser, premiere the new programming after iftar hours for your main region, and switch the grid in and out with the calendar. Cover community events live over RTMP or SRT the rest of the year.

The broadcast week

What runs on an Arabic channel.

Talk and drama fill the year. Ramadan rewrites the whole grid for a month.

Drama

Musalsalat, where rights allow

Ramadan is when new musalsalat premiere. The rest of the year, a licensed serial in a fixed nightly slot keeps viewers coming back, with the guide naming each episode.

Talk & community

The conversation in your dialect

Talk shows, community affairs, cooking and lifestyle programming made for your viewers, in the Arabic they actually speak at home. This is the programming the pan-Arab satellite networks will never make about your city.

Devotional

Tilawat and the daily rhythm

Quran recitation opens the day, religious talks take their evening slots, and the devotional grid deepens in Ramadan. Hijri date and daily adhan graphics, generated automatically for your channel’s city, are arriving shortly.

The season

Ramadan, built ahead

The month the whole audience watches at once. Seasonal grids are built in advance and switched in with the calendar: drama premieres, extended devotional blocks, and Eid programming to close it out.

The details

What it takes, in practice

Two things decide whether an Arabic channel lasts: the rights behind the library, and whether the grid is ready before Ramadan. Both are settled in a browser, alongside the weekly schedule and one encoder for whatever you produce live. Scheduling, graphics, the programme guide and worldwide delivery are all cloud-side on the Cloud Playout plans, from $254 per month with viewers never metered. It is a FAST (free, ad-supported) or linear channel speaking Arabic, and it can be on air in minutes.

From the dish to the smart TV, without losing either

Arabic television abroad grew up on satellite: the dish on the balcony was how the language stayed in the house. That audience is migrating to smart TVs and phones, and the second generation never pointed a dish at anything. A streaming channel meets both where they are: a web player and casting for the living room, mobile for everyone else, and if a transponder is still part of your distribution, a constant-bitrate SRT or RIST output keeps the uplink fed from the same schedule. Keep the dish for as long as your own audience numbers justify the lease. Moving off satellite starts by moving the schedule and graphics into the cloud while the uplink stays on air.

Right to left, from day one

The playout engine handles right-to-left text on every plan. Lower thirds, tickers and titles render Arabic correctly, and higher plans let you upload fonts so the channel carries its own face. Nobody on your team has to fight a ticker that scrolls the wrong way.

The audience is scattered; the numbers are not

Delivery is unlimited on every plan from 300+ cities, and the city-level map shows exactly which communities watch, hour by hour. The halal brands, umrah travel agencies, remittance services and local businesses that court this audience can see which cities watched and how many of their ads were delivered.

If the masjid is the centre

Channels built primarily around the masjid run the same way, with the prayer calendar rather than the drama slot shaping the day, so start from Islamic television. Hindi, Bangla, Urdu, Tamil and Punjabi channels are built the same way here.

EVERY CHANNEL INCLUDES
Questions

Arabic channels, answered.

How much does it cost to start an Arabic TV channel?

Plans start at $254 per month billed yearly, per channel, with delivery worldwide included and viewers never metered, so the Ramadan peak costs the same as a quiet month. There is no contract, and the first purchase has a 7-day money-back guarantee.

Does the channel handle Arabic script properly?

Yes, natively. Arabic is supported from the start, so lower thirds, tickers and titles run right to left without any workaround. Higher plans add custom font upload, so the channel can use its own Arabic typeface instead of a system default.

Our community still watches satellite TV. Why start a streaming channel?

Because the dish is where your audience was, and the smart TV is where it is going. A streaming channel plays in a web player, casts to the living-room TV via Chromecast and AirPlay, and reaches the second generation that never installed a dish. AI subtitles on higher plans let them read in English what the channel says in Arabic, and the Studio plan can translate and dub. You can keep the dish too: CBR SRT and RIST outputs, the steady constant-bitrate feed a satellite uplink needs, are available, so the same channel can still feed a transponder.

Do we need rights for musalsalat and films?

Yes. Musalsalat are licensed like any other content, and distribution platforms ask for proof. The big pan-Arab drama catalogs are tightly held, so build the durable base on what you can own or license directly: your own productions, community coverage, talk and cooking shows, devotional programming, and independent producers you can actually reach. Add licensed drama blocks as written agreements arrive.

Which Arabic does the channel broadcast in?

That is a programming decision, and the schedule can hold more than one answer. Many channels run news and formal programming in Modern Standard Arabic and entertainment in the dialect their community actually speaks, whether that is Levantine, Egyptian, Gulf or Maghrebi. Know who your channel is for and let the grid reflect it.

What happens to the schedule in Ramadan?

Ramadan is the season Arabic television is built around: new dramas premiere, viewing peaks after iftar, and the whole grid changes. Seasonal schedules are built ahead in the browser and switched in when the month arrives, then switched back after Eid, and the analytics show hour by hour how viewing moves through the month.

Can we run Quran and Islamic programming alongside general content?

Yes. Quran recitation at dawn and religious talks after maghrib sit comfortably beside drama and talk shows, and the devotional share of the grid grows in Ramadan. A channel built mainly around the masjid works the other way round, with prayer times setting the day.

How does an Arabic channel make money?

Halal food brands, umrah and hajj travel agencies, remittance services, telecom, real estate and immigration practices all court Arabic-speaking communities. Ads go into the stream on our side (server-side ad insertion, on every plan). The advertisers are yours and so is 100% of what they pay. The platform fee is $1 per 1,000 impressions that reached a viewer, with the first 25,000 each month included. Sponsor graphics and house ads are free to run.

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