Adham Center News

Graduates Help Orbit Network Achieve Vision on New Channel

JUNE 13, 2000 A number of recent Adham Center graduates have found a professional home with the Orbit satellite channel, which is using their infusion of youth and energy to fuel a new era in Arab broadcasting.

The fruitful partnership began in October 1999 when the satellite channel’s executive director in Egypt, Tarek El Kashef, recruited Ali Belail, an Adham Center alumni who had formerly been working with the BBC. Ali was appointed head of the VTR unit responsible for providing field reports for a daily three-hour Ramadan program called Leilat Orbit. Belail began to develop the unit, and several other Adham Center graduates such as Rasha El Sayed, Rania Kazak and Rania Hegazy, all class of 1999, joined the team as field reporters.

The program’s combination of live broadcasts and youthful perspectives was a great success, and Orbit is now channeling that momentum into a new, more energetic broadcast experiment.

Orbit has now launched a third satellite channel which is largely built around the model established by Leilat Orbit. The new channel is decidedly more youth-oriented than Orbit¹s other two broadcast offerings, with a younger, fresher perspective and a greater emphasis on live programming. The new program, called Al-Qahira al-Youm (Cairo Today), which began with the launch of the channel, is aired live five days a week, three hours a day. The VTR unit headed by Belail—which has now expanded to include an editorial section—will be playing a vital role in this new channel’s success. The program, as the name implies, includes various segments on events happening in Cairo. The VTR unit provides several daily reports on current events, news, exhibitions and other topics pertaining to Cairo.

In addition to the staffers hired for the original Leilat Orbit program, the channel has also added Adham Center graduate Azza Shaaban as a reporter/producer, and Maha Reda, one of the earliest Adham center graduates, is in charge of coordinating all the third channel programs originating in Cairo.