30m Arabs Get a Chance to Vote - for a Pop Idol

It has millions of people glued to their television sets, voting in the most authoritarian societies of the Arab world, and it has nothing to do with politics. Sunday will witness the finals of Superstar, the hit Arabic version of Pop Idol.

The show, produced by the Lebanese satellite channel Future TV, is one of the world’s most popular broadcasts in Arabic, sometimes pulling in more than 30 million viewers for the two-hour show.

Around 100 contestants were recruited from Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, Jordan and from among expatriate Arabs in the US and Australia. A team of four judges cut that to 21 and viewers, voting by mobile phone, text message and the internet, reduced them to a final 12, who have spent the past three months in Beirut in the final stages of the competition. The winner gets a professional record deal. The one condition is that the contestants must sing in Arabic.

Presenter Aiman Kaissouni, 30, was born in Egypt but brought up in Britain, living in Bournemouth and later in Box Hill, Surrey. He worked in marketing until he was offered a screen test in Beirut.

Reality television has been around for several years in Arabic, but has not always been easy to produce. In 2004, a show called al-Ra’is, a direct copy of Big Brother but set in a house in Bahrain, lasted less than a week after a quick kiss between a young Saudi man and a Tunisian woman caused an outcry that forced its cancellation. When the first season of Superstar was broadcast three years ago there was a small riot in Beirut when a Lebanese singer was voted off in the final stages.

For others, reality television has been a breath of fresh air. "Arabs are not used to voting. It’s really an alien concept and this is putting a new perspective on the way people think," said Nasser Fakih, the show’s director. "I had one Saudi send me an email asking: ‘Why can’t we have a Superstar show to vote for our favorite politicians?’"

This year there are three contestants left: a Saudi, a Tunisian and a woman from Syria, aged 17. One was due to be voted off last night. The other two go forward to Sunday’s final.