Chouf TV
Moroccan media company
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Chouf TV (Arabic: شوف تيفي) is an arabophone Moroccan media company created in 2013 by Driss Chahtane and owned by S W Media, LLC, of which Chahtane is the sole shareholder.[1] It describes its content as "web TV" with over a million subscribers on its YouTube channel.[1] Chouf TV has been characterized as tabloid journalism and described as an "unprecedented media phenomenon."[2]
Name
In Moroccan vernacular Arabic, شوف (shūf) is the imperative of the verb شاف (shāf, "to look").[3] The company's name in Latin script is romanized according to French orthography.
History
The founder of the company, Driss Chahtane was the previous publishing director of Al-Michaal newspaper. He was sentenced to one year in prison for sexual assault, and publishing of adult content, and was incarcerated[4] in Morocco[5] in 2009, but he was released by order from Mohammed VI in 2010.[6][7]
Driss said: "The idea at the beginning was to present something new, as I saw that the readership of the written press was eroding. The transition was digital. At the time, newspapers used the digital but in a very traditional way."[2]
The media company publishes content with the potential to create buzz.[2]