Ownership and management models of state-owned versus privately-owned saudi news channels

Abstract EN

Recent years have witnessed many developments in all fields within Saudi Arabia; these developments have occurred in parallel with vast changes in the political and economic events that have occurred in this part of the world.

The media in Saudi Arabia, one of the most important fields in which considerable improvements has occurred, in terms of budgets and encouragement from both the government and investors in the private media sector.

The Gulf War (1991), the war in Iraq (2003) and the 'Arab Spring' saw the ending of many regimes; these political events changed the Saudi broadcasting industry, not least, state-owned and privately-owned broadcasting channels.

This study seeks to contribute to the emerging debate about the topic of media ownership and management by investigating the impact of ownership models as well as business models on the media production process within Saudi news channels.

The internal environment such as the organisational structure of two Saudi Arabia news channels: (state-owned Al-Ekhbaria TV and independent Al-Arabiya), are examined together with the external environment such as the economic and political context which affect news production in state-owned and privately-owned channels.