Moroccans watch soaps for 3 hours a day

Turkish drama Moroccan people spend an average of three hours every day watching Turkish drama, Moroccan audiovisual census institution Maroc Metre revealed. The institution revealed in August that Turkish soaps are ratings winners on Moroccan channels with more than seven million viewers. This represents a 68% share of the ratings.
TV channel programmer Zuhair Zriue said that Moroccan television only chooses one Turkish work each year. He added that Turkish productions were better than Egyptian or Syrian productions, saying that they only needed to pay for broadcasting rights.  
In an attempt to understand the reasons behind this phenomenon, communication researcher Mohammad Razin looked into it: "Turkish drama are usually well produced and use innovative cinema techniques. The storyline usually tries to deliver a message to the audience and reflects social and psychological aspects of society.”
In an interview with Arabstoday, communication researcher Yehya el-Yehyawy said: "I can't see any subjective reason behind this Moroccan trend about Turkish drama. It seems that Turkish drama is just ‘in’ at the moment, like Mexican and Brazilian drama were a few years ago. Despite the fact that Egyptian productions are dominating the ratings these days, Morocco seems to stay faithful to Turkish drama. Morocco and Turkey are similar on several levels and they share common values.”
Yehyawy suggested that maybe some of the producers do market researches before writing the scenario to live up to the audience’s expectation.
He added: “Some of these soaps like Sayedat el-Mazraa (Farm lady) can become a real addiction for the viewers, regardless of their age, background or education.”
 Moroccan drama doesn’t possess these characteristics, which has led the Moroccans to look for something more exciting somewhere else.
Media professor Abdelwahab el-Ramy said: “This sort of drama goes straight to the viewer’s emotional side – a love story that will go on for many episodes will create an addiction and make the viewer become familiar with the characters and make him/her feel that he’s part of the drama too.”