The Standard Arabic Global Bouquet

The Standard Arabic Global TV Bouquet

At the beginning of 2018, there were 21 Arab satellite channels in the Standard Arabic Global Bouquet. The Bouquet, which is implemented and supervised by ASBU and Arabsat, is a major success story in terms of Arab radio and TV joint action thanks to the large practical, technical, economic and strategicbenefits gained by the satellite channels participating in the Bouquet, as well as by Arab viewers in the different areas covered by the Bouquet worldwide.

A prominent feature of the Standard Global Arabic Bouquet is the use of the most popular satellites among Arab communities abroad, which would help the participating channels to achieve higher viewer figures.

The biggest challenge for our member corporations at this stage remains upgrading from SDTV to HDTV. The member corporations' main focus is to complete preparations to upgrade to HDTV broadcasting.

In line with the trend to ensure better quality for higher viewership, and in light of field studies in Europe, North America and developed countries in Asia, all the major networks, with more than 80% viewership share are HDTV networks.

In cooperation with ArabSat, ASBU Directorate-General contacted Globcast to obtain competitive prices that are 30% higher than the current cost in return for a 100% increase in capacity. This is an important incentive for the member corporations to take the appropriate action despite budget expenditureshaving been determined. It should be mentioned that Qatar, Kuwait and Oman are currently preparing their recommendations to migrate to HDTV.

The Standard Arabic Bouquet is currently made up of 21 Arab satellite channels:

IPTV Bouquet

IPTV Arabic Global Bouquetis one of the outstanding services provided by ASBU to its members as well as to other radio and television corporations. The service consists in IPTV from multiple servers available in North America and Europe, which allows participating corporations to cover large areas of the globe, in accordance with the wishes of the said corporations, while ensuring better broadcast quality and significant cost reduction. ASBU oversees proper satellite broadcasting with Arabsat and Globcast,and proper broadband broadcasting with Canadian AVA. AVA figures show that there were 386.000 viewing hours on average in 2016 from April to August, up one million monthly on average compared to 292,000 hours in 2015, 57,000 hours in 2014 and 15,000 hours in 2014.

The steady increase in viewing hours is due to the viewing pattern adopted by a large number of viewers, especially among young people, who use the so-called second screen, as well as to the efforts ofAVA which continues to develop its mobile phone applications (IPhoneand Galaxy), and to provide dedicated receivers with high memory capacity for top quality viewing, in addition to the use of theMPEG-4system.

In addition, some ASBU member corporations that enjoy high viewing rates advertise the e-service website: www.glarab.com

The viewing rates are as follows:

44 Arab channels currently participate in the service after having notified ASBU Directorate-General with their consent: