The region votes Saudi female and Jordanian male to present Quest Arabiya’s 2016 info-bytes.

The winners of Quest Arabiya’s ‘Quest for Talent’ have been announced.

20-year-old Balquees Basalom, a student at the American University of Sharjah from Saudi Arabia and 27-year-old Mohammed Sakkijah, a motorsport and wildlife enthusiast from Jordan, were selected by the public in a social media vote.

Quest Arabiya, a free-to-air, factual entertainment Arabic TV channel, launched their ‘Quest for Talent’ initiative in June 2015 across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), in a bid to find potential TV personalities to appear on their new channel.

More than 1,000 budding TV stars sent applications from across the region and the huge list of entries has been whittled down to the two lucky winners.

After responding to Quest Arabiya’s advert, appealing for talent to send in a short video clip of themselves presenting, they have now been selected to present the 2016 info-bytes.

Previous TV presenting experience was not needed and applications were invited from men and women aged 18 to 40 from every corner of the MENA region.

The shortlist of contestants consists of males and females from ages 20 to 31 from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Sudan.

The channel, a partnership between Image Nation Abu Dhabi and Discovery Communications, which is accessible to 320 million people in 45 million households in 22 countries, was particularly interested in people who display an interest in any of Quest Arabiya’s main programming genres: adventure and survival, motoring, engineering, wildlife, history, people and places, science, crime and magic.