Tag Archives: MTV

Dancing With The Stars Coming To Lebanon

The United States’ most watched competition TV Show is coming to Lebanon thanks to MTV. A source has told me that the show’s presenter will be Carla Haddad, former weather anchor at LBC, who went to MTV solely in order to quick start the show.

MTV has already started promo for the show on its airways by teasing viewers about the most watched TV show in the world coming to its airways, along with scenes of people dancing. This is the promo in question:

Don’t expect a lot of current famous people to make their way to the TV show but expect “stars” that we are at least familiar with. I will update this post if I get definite names of anyone who’s participating in it.

DWTS pairs famous people with a dancing partner and they dance to a judging panel which grades them. Their grade is then combined with audience vote to determine who gets kicked off. The American version is now in an all-star season which has brought back winners and finalists from all previous seasons.

I personally think MTV has the chops to pull off such a production, similarly to how MBC and LBC are pulling off The Voice. I guess we’ll wait and see. DWTS should start airing on MTV soon.

MTV Lebanon Won’t Damage Lebanon’s “Reputation” Anymore – LOL?

I read the post over on Gino’s Blog but had no idea what he was referring to until I saw the video on Blog Baladi.

It seems that MTV Lebanon has decided that:

“For Lebanon to remain beautiful, we cannot burn tires whenever sh*t hits the fan. So MTV Lebanon has decided to stop covering all incidents that distort Lebanon’s image for the world and we’ll be there for you when you protest in a civilized manner. You can get your voice across at any time you want, instead of your smoke. Your demands are righteous but the situation cannot remain tense. This is our message and we hope everyone follows it.”

Let alone the fact that a TV station is required to cover these things which are crucial to the livelihood of citizens since MTV is one of the country’s leading networks but I have to ask the simple question: what Lebanon do they live in exactly? Because I really want to live there as well. Do they really think the tire-burning incidents are so un-Lebanese that they do not deserve coverage?

Denial is not just a river in Egypt. It seems to run straight through Naccache as well. Let’s stop pretending that the Lebanese are so above burning tires and distorting the image of their country. They’ve been doing it for years. They won’t stop now.

MTV Lebanon Produces Music Video for Women Rights with Participation of MP Sethrida Geagea

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MTV has recently unveiled their latest contribution to the current legislative efforts for a law to protect women from all forms of abuse, notably marital rape, soon after International Women’s Day.
To help them advocate for such a cause, they’ve enlisted the help of the female MP who has probably worked the most for such a law to see the light: Sethrida Geagea.

Geagea’s role in the music video is perhaps minimal but it’s a reflection of her commitment to the cause at hand, which brings me back to a point I had mentioned previously: the only way for the women of Lebanon to have true influence is to assert political power, which can only be achieved by voting in more women to parliament, who need to be as energetic and feisty about their rights as MP Geagea is and not a corresponding puppet to the political block they’re part of.

Spare Us the MTV Hate

Who among you, precious readers, has made a “Homsi” joke?

No, don’t be ashamed to raise your hand. If you’re not raising it then you are lying. We’ve all done it. We’ve all said it. We all have a connotation in our head that homsi is equal with stupid. Even when Steve Jobs died, some statuses were: “A Homsi just changed the world….”

The Homsis are also the ones getting hammered by Assad’s forces now in their revolution.

Then why don’t we all get into a fit of “OMG OMG *hyperventilates* RACISM” when everyone does the Homsi jokes?

Yes, you guessed it. No one sees it as racism. But it is. It flagrantly is.

The recent? The leading Lebanese TV station MTV featured on one of its comedy shows “Ktir Salbe” a comedy skit about migrant workers in Lebanon that many perceived as racist. BeirutSpring was even speculating about boycotting MTV as a whole, starting with deleting their app.

1) I have no idea if people in Lebanon actually think our society is NOT racist, but apparently this is the case. Why else would everyone get angry because of a comedy skit that showcases what most people do with the maids they get?

2) For those criticizing the comedy skit, I ask. How many of you watch American comedy shows such as SouthPark or Family Guy? Are you offended by the racist “slurs” those shows make? Better yet, in case “cartoons” are too childish for you, what’s your opinion on shows like The Colbert Report and other political satire shows that also make fun of racist issues? You laugh at those, right? Is your idea of “deranged comedy” only applicable when it’s done by a Lebanese?

3) Regardless of how you look at it, the Ktir Salbe skit is racist. But it’s not racist because they, as actors and personnel and TV station, are racist. The skit is as such because the show is, at the end of the day, a satire on Lebanese society. Just for reference, those same characters have had a very similar skit where they were parents at their children’s school, asking the headmistress every unimaginable thing you can come up with – including making their child sectarian. Why didn’t anyone get angry then?

4) MTV is possibly the only Lebanese TV station actually highlighting humanitarian issues in Lebanon. They even have a show “Tahkik” used exclusively for such purposes. Even the news report about foreigners in Bourj Hammoud was highlighting a social issue that many Lebanese societies have. Whether that news report was well done or not is a totally different matter. And yet, everyone had to feel involved with it. Question. Are you from Bourj Hammoud? If so, were you offended by that news report and the subsequent decision by your municipality to regulate foreign workers? If you’re from Bourj Hammoud and you were offended, then you know how to vote next elections. If you’re not from Bourj Hammoud, then you do have a right for free speech, obviously. But how do you know that the crime rates have not gone up because of an uncontrolled influx of foreign workers?

I blogged about this before with regards to the Myriam Achkar murder – foreign workers in Lebanon need to be regulated, whether you think it’s racist or not.

5) For all matters and purposes, MTV is the best Lebanese TV station. It is revolutionary in every way possible for the Lebanese scene: they have a great iOS app, they are very apt at handling social media, they use state of the art technology, etc…. Regardless of the political content of its news, so you don’t say I’m politically biased, every single show MTV airs is done with the care for details and with great execution. Their comedy shows can be lame sometimes, as is the case with every Lebanese comedy show, but it still doesn’t mean we need to bash them for the comedy they do because, at the end of the day, they are doing “comedy.”

For those who want to boycott MTV, have you tried contacting the TV station first to see what it has to say about this? A TV show does not summarize a whole TV station.

As for the rest, I quote: “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Lebanese TV Presenter Maya Diab – Before and After

Even though Maya Diab, currently hosting MTV’s “Hek Menghanné” is a great looking woman, many have been sure that she’s had a few plastic surgeries to help her.

And what’s “better” than to have an old TV appearance of Maya Diab come back to “haunt” her.

This is her in 2001:

And this is her today:

No need to watch the whole thing. The first minute should be enough.

They should make a “spot the difference” game out of this. It’d be her whole face – literally.