Beyond Factionalism? Cultural and Children's Programs on Palestinian Satellite TV

This study examines the production of Palestinian satellite television in the contemporary era. The focus is on cultural and children’s programs of two key stations, the Hamas-based Al Aqsa Satellite Channel (ASC) and the Fatah-based Palestine Satellite Channel (PSC). The study interrogates how factors beyond simple factional politics come to impact the creation of cultural and children's programming. Even in the polarised political environment of the Palestinian territories, the study shows through close content analysis and qualitative analysis of production, including in-depth producer interviews, that overtly factional media outlets have become ‘defactionalised’ in terms of content and production values. ASC and PSC producers of cultural and children’s programmes are subject to the same technological, social, and economic constraints theorised by Julie D'Acci, Herbert Gans, Todd Gitlin, as other producers. However, the Palestinian context is also distinctive. Since the first and second intifada and the time of the Oslo Accords, the question of whether satellite TV can help transform the previously factional media of both Hamas and the PLO or the Palestinian Authority, is something this study seeks to investigate. Changes in audience reach and production techniques, in the evolution of Israeli occupation, and in the emergence of a new discourse of ‘Palestinianism’ have all impacted children’s and cultural programming in various ways. The result is to temper the role of purely factional politics and propaganda with some degree of ‘defactionalisation’ of content and approach. Despite the factional structure of Palestinian media, this study argues that producers have striven to overcome divisions and to ‘defactionalise’ content and production values. ASC and PSC cultural and children’s programmes have thus contributed to a renewed sense of a shared identity among Palestinian people across and territories, despite existing within a system still characterised by a politically defined segmented reality.