Chouf TV () is an

arabophone Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including ...

Moroccan media company created in 2013 by and owned by S W Media, LLC, of which Chahtane is the sole shareholder. It describes its content as "web TV" with over a million subscribers on its

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

channel. Chouf TV has been characterized as

tabloid journalism Tabloid journalism is a popular style of largely sensationalist journalism, which takes its name from the tabloid newspaper format: a small-sized newspaper also known as a half broadsheet. The size became associated with sensationalism, an ...

and described as an "unprecedented media phenomenon."

Name

In Moroccan vernacular Arabic, (''shūf'') is the imperative of the verb (''shāf'', "to look"). The company's name in Latin script is romanized according to

French orthography French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language. It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French –1200 AD, and has ...

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 in

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

in 2009, but he was released by order from Mohammed VI in 2010. 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." The media company publishes content with the potential to create

buzz Buzz may refer to: People * Buzz (nickname), a list of people * J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner (born 1967; aka ''Dr. Buzz''), American forensic psychologist and journalist Fictional characters * Buzz, a character in the 1987 American comedy movie ...

References

{{Reflist Digital media Mass media in Morocco Moroccan news websites