Over the past years I found myself moving away from watching local TV towards streaming online video content. I am one of those people who spends a lot of time in front of screens, with the difference of TV now being my second screen while Laptop or Mobile is first.

With the exception of the primetime news, I rarely find myself fixated on a local TV show. Many TV programs nowadays insult our intelligence, are extremely biased and opinionated, have poor production and content value or have literally nothing to say, they are just filling air time.

Min Bya3ref is a show that stands out from the crowd. For the past few weeks, I found myself enjoying every single episode and actually participating remotely in the show. I realized that many people feel the same, even my 6 year-old tries to participate by guessing the answers and feeling extremely proud when he gets it right (even though he understands nothing). In fact, the question sets include everything from general knowledge to social media and viral stories from Lebanon and the Arab World so everyone can take part in that show.

To me, these are all signs proving that the format is successful, entertaining and engaging. It has brought me back from being a passive TV viewer to a more engaged one. The show has a good production value, the set is simple and well designed and the content is very well prepared and custom tailored for the audience. More importantly, the presenter Nadia Bsat fits perfectly in the show, she is charismatic, respectful and bring out the very best out of her guests (which is something we really miss on TV and enjoy seeing). My only complaint is that some guests tend to take their participation lightly and end up acting silly during the show. It’s nice to have fun participants but they need to remember that this is a serious show and not a comedy.

I hope we see more programs like it on TV and wish that in the future they introduce an online tool or app to give people at home the ability to participate and interact with the show, or simply allow people to register and take part in it, not just media people and celebrities.

At the end we know that content will always remain king, even though we are overwhelmed today by information and everything is literally at our fingertips one Google search away, but whenever good, relevant, and local content is properly packaged, the result is always a successful product and an interested and engaged audience.

Min Bya3ref shows every Wednesday at 8:45pm on MTV Lebanon.