No. 5, Fall/Winter2000

Special Issue:
The Arab World

continued: "The Dubai Digital Broadcasting Miracle" by S. Abdallah Schleifer
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Viacom's chairman Sumner Redstone recently visited Dubai at the Sheikh's invitation. As a shareholder and principal supplier of product, Viacom already has a stake in the region in Showtime, and after a tour of Media City during his visit to Dubai, Redstone told Interspace (Sept. 20, 2000) that DMC was a welcome addition to the facilities of the region. He reportedly told Sheikh Mohammad that his plan was "to discuss what I have seen with my top executives and probably have them come over here and share the experience I have had. As you have rightly pointed out this is a vast part of the world, with an enormous population that means great growth opportunities for Viacom."

One of the first international broadcast-related companies to identify Dubai as a natural location for its Arab regional sales and marketing office was Sony Broadcast. In 1981 Sony Broadcast set up an extensive--and expensive--shop in Cairo. In 1983 they opened an office in Dubai, and by 1986 they had decided to close the Cairo operation and to run everything out of Dubai.

Hassan El-Ghoul ran the Cairo operation for Sony and then moved to Dubai as general manager. "We moved here," he says, "because it was a very viable commercial center with the right infrastructure and a positive government attitude towards the private sector. Both were missing at that time in Cairo. What's happening now is quite similar. The same factors--the right infrastructure and a positive government attitude toward the needs of private sector broadcasters and production houses--is what is turning Dubai into a regional broadcasting center. And with the rise of the price of oil, everything in the region is back on the growth track, so Dubai is flourishing more than ever."

Two of the major developments in digital broadcasting that I mentioned at the very beginning of this article have at present nothing to do with Dubai Media City. But they have everything to do with the fundamentals El-Ghoul outlined that are attracting all sorts of business, and increasingly the broadcasting business, to Dubai.

It would stand to reason that of all the state-owned Dubai TV channels, the one channel that has managed to cut loose from that public-sector television quality that even informs Dubai TV (if less so than other national channels in the Arab world) would be the new Dubai Business Channel. A large part of the reason has to do with a certain autonomy granted this channel, which one suspects has to do ultimately with Sheikh Mohammed's vision of Dubai as the new media (and that includes digital satellite TV) center of the Arab world--even if he does not appear to be directly involved in managing the destiny of this amazing channel. But the channel's young director general, Rashid Murooshid, is typical of the new generation of Emiratis so often associated with Sheikh Mohammad. He is dynamic, fiercely competitive, charismatic and defied conventional wisdom by getting the channel on air more than a year ago in but a few months.

The Dubai Business Channel is the first exclusively global business news service broadcast free-to-air in the Arab world, and it presents a picture of world economic events as well as regional business news from a unique Middle Eastern perspective, in both Arabic and English. DBC correspondents generate professional field reports on business developments from Cairo and other Arab capitals, in addition to in-studio programming. According to critics it is rivaled only by Al-Jazeera for the most professionally designed and paced Arab channel broadcasting today.

Tamer Abdalaal, who was hired by Murooshid to take over as production manager this past year, describes the entire production staff at the channel, approximately 70 people, as "a kaleidoscope of nationalities and backgrounds, from seasoned professionals from the famous Financial Times Television in the UK to recent Emirati college graduates who will be trained in TV production." The DBC, according to Abdalaal, has "the perfect mix of experience and vitality which will make this a very unique and fulfilling career-building environment."

DBC also has the technological right stuff. It was the first TV operation in Dubai to have 100-percent digital non-linear post-production and transmission facilities, based on various solutions from both Sony and Quantel, DBC's main suppliers. The post-production facilities include Quantel's Editbox, Paintbox, Picturebox, and Hal Express. Being all digital and all from the same manufacturer, it creates a seamless network inside the station. The studio is equipped by a digital system from Sony and features a blue screen virtual studio in which the image prospective in the background is connected to the cameras so that when the cameras zoom in or out or pan left or right, the background changes accordingly.

But the backbone of the operation, according to Abdalaal, is the Avstar Newsroom System manufactured in Wisconsin, USA. This is a system networked throughout the station (including the studio control room and post-production facilities) that allows journalists to retrieve all the news wires such as Reuters and AFP in real time, write their scripts, chose their captions, and even cue their presenters when to be in or out of vision during the live broadcast. "This is even the tool our studio directors use to cue their directions during broadcast. Our chief engineer, Dave Richards, has even developed software that automatically writes the captions on the Aston Motif character generator in the studio. Just think, the journalist can write his or her story, choose and request their graphics, and it is produced automatically on the character generator. This system is vital to our operation in that it controls all aspects of a TV newsroom. Thank God there is still a need for production managers," says Abdalaal, with a smile that is just a bit wistful. continued

Next page: E-Vision, "the first real cable TV operation in the Arab world"
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