A star for our nights

The winding year saw the rise of figures and phenomena that promise to be of crucial importance this year. Al-Ahram Weekly keeps track of a changing vista

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Mona El-Shazli

Mona El-Shazli is a name that has become known to many TV viewers during the last few years; it is expected to be known to an even greater number during 2006. A young TV presenter with a quintessential Egyptian face and a rare sense of objectivity has provided in " Al-Ashera Massaan " (10PM) -- a fixture of the Egyptian satellite channel Dream -- what many older faces have consistently failed to deliver.

El-Shazli did not start off with Dream; she was a prominent figure on another, albeit not Egyptian satellite channel, ART. Though she studied mass communications and political science at the American University in Cairo, her TV career started as a coincidence when, interviewing ART presenters for a university journal article, she did outstandingly on a camera test without the benefit of training. For the next nine years, and starting while still an undergraduate, she presented three of the channel's most outstanding shows: " La Tazhab haza Al-Masaa " (Don't go this evening); " Al-Qadia lam Tohsam Baad " (Case not yet closed) " La Asmaa la Aara la Atkalam " (Hear no evil). Nearly a decade on, having consolidated her position in the Arab media, the leap onto Dream gave her a new boost.

The channel had not had a strong female presenter with a good programme for a long time and, having the prime-time 10pm slot almost every day, El-Shazli made the most of the concept: a mixture of live, and live phone, interviews that proved even more winning than her hot topic debate shows.

Interviewing ministers, editors-in-chief and controversial social figures gave her programme special status, something made all the more obvious when she interviewed controversial candidates in the course of the presidential elections -- the episodes that made her name. In some 2005 newspaper and radio polls, she's managed to win the female presenter of the year.

It seems calmness and a gift for the camera is all that it takes, in the end.

By Dena Rashed