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Schleifer: Do you see shifts in delivery systems?

Ritchie: There's a move toward Internet delivery; we're using telestream, which is non-real time at the moment. When you've got non-real time and can afford to take a couple of hours to send a five-minute piece, that is what telestream can do, and at a pretty good technical quality. The big issues are how long it takes to deliver and what the technical quality is. Bear in mind that we service broadcasters. For example, if you talk to NHK in Japan, they're really keen about news being in high definition quality, not just normal and certainly not digicam. We're using digital Betacam in most of our bureaus, but we're gradually phasing in the digicams, and we find the quality fantastic. They're considerably cheaper and much more lightweight, and the ones we've put in the field so far have been extremely good. I think from our point of view they're much safer. If you're carrying a large, heavy camera you're first of all much more obvious to people who may want to target you, and second, if you're the cameraman looking through an eyepiece you're not very aware of what's going on around you. If you're using one of the new lightweight digital cameras, they're less obvious, and it's easier for the cameraman to be aware. And of course if you want to do more clandestine filming, they're easier to put in a bag. But the key issue is that they're much cheaper, and the quality is getting better. And if you move into a situation of Internet delivery systems down the road, it's also a much cheaper means of delivery than satellite. The cost of entry into being a global news provider therefore goes down.

At the end of the day, though, it still comes down to content. It's important for us as a service provider to be at the forefront of the technology, whether it's satellite phones or Internet delivery, and we will continue to invest in all of those things. But you still have to have someone filming stories, decide where you're going to go and how you're going to cover it. You have to have the caliber of journalists.

Schleifer: Your journalists are cameramen, photojournalists. With the exception of the Middle East you aren't putting reporters out in the field. Are they providing text to go with the footage?

Ritchie: We send a script on all our pieces out on satellite, and we also put it on the Internet so clients can access the scripts there too. It's a basic description of what happened—it's very important for us to maintain editorial integrity, so there's no "spin" on an event at all. It's very detached. If the broadcaster puts their own spin on it, whether for a particular region or for the interest of their viewers, that's entirely a matter for them to decide.

Schleifer: There's sometimes a curious relationship between technology and quality, that as we get more and more technologically acute then the journalistic sensibility declines, journalists and producers become packagers and rely more and more on wire copy. People become masters of technology, but are weak in terms of content. This is aggravated by technology that allows, and therefore we insist upon, live, instantaneous news. Given that, how do you recruit people to send out in the field?

Ritchie: I think the good journalism is still absolutely fundamental. We'd rather see someone with a good, sound journalism background and teach them how to shoot—especially because these new cameras are easy. We want somebody to be in the right place at the right time, have a nose for the story, and know enough on the camera to be able to get the pictures. This is a generation that grew up with video cameras at home. When you give them the next step up in a professional situation, they're perfectly comfortable with it.

This question goes back to the point about the content being more important than the technology. We are providing serious journalistic cover to newsrooms around the world. Our clients are professionals and we have to match that. The journalism is what wins and what distinguishes. But there's no point in being at the right place at the right time if you haven't thought about how to get the pictures back. We had an exclusive this year about Mir coming down to earth. We planned it; we had five or six photojournalists in the likely landing areas. The man who shot it was in the right place, but it was planned that he be there. We also won out because he had the technology from that beach, a satellite phone, to get the pictures back live. It worked extremely well, because that's what people wanted—they wanted to see it near to live. This is still the drawback with the Internet; more and more of our customers are interested in live. With 24-hour news channels, they need it live or extremely close to that. The satellite is still the delivery system for that, as opposed to telephones or Internet.

The journalism skills are so fundamental; everything else is an adjunct to that. What distinguishes our coverage is getting the pictures and being there, whether it's a scheduled event or breaking news.

Schleifer: How do you see broadcasting in the Arab world now that you're seeing it not as a broadcaster but as the head of an operation that's serving the region?

Ritchie: It's confirmed for me what potential the region has. I think audience research is a key issue. I was recently in Russia, and Russian TV advertising collapsed in 1998 but they're very confident that it's coming back in 2001. One reason for this is a new deal with Gallup to get considerably greater audience research, not just in the major cities but in the outlying areas. The biggest single impediment to increasing advertising revenue in the Arab broadcasting world is the lack of coherent, mutually accepted audience research. We tried at MBC to set up a pan-Arab research company that would be fully objective—the difficulty in the region is that whoever is paying for the research feels they get a favorable situation. What you need is regular, reliable research independent of the broadcaster, and that everyone accepts. It can still be owned by the broadcasters, as long as the management is kept separate. Pure state funding of broadcasting in the Middle East is obviously still very high. What you really need to make Arab broadcasting more successful is a vibrant and strong commercial sector. The potential is there. There is a very affluent group of people in the Middle East, but things are lagging partly because the multinationals won't invest until they see proper data. The ratings for "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" on MBC over the last few months must have been fantastic. Who can say to the advertiser, if you want this prime spot, here is the appropriate rate. If you can demonstrate the figures, you'll get the multinationals to spend the money. If you can't, it's a difficult discussion to have. If there were one single issue that would revolutionize broadcasting in the Middle East, it would be a get-together of the major broadcasters to agree on a currency of ratings that was carried out through a credible international organization.

Schleifer: Between free-to-air and pay-TV, there are an incredible number of channels in the Middle East. Are the airwaves too crowded?

Ritchie: It's not certainly uncommon in the Middle East, people wanting to put money in television and media interests. You look at all these channels and wonder if anyone can pay the cost of supporting them, pay the cost of proper content. Where is the quality of programming that people want to see? The trouble with this dilution, this increase in the number of channels, is that nobody has the programming ability to pay for the cost—or they're loss leaders, but how can anyone sustain loss leaders for five, six, seven years. When you have a successful property, the viewers will go to that, they'll watch something with high production quality. That means you have to spend money. People get into a cyclical situation where they don't spend enough money on the programming, and therefore have no chance of generating advertising, which means they can't spend money on programming.

I think there's a huge opportunity in the Middle East for a commercially driven, wide audience appeal, genuinely pan-Arab channel, reflecting within the schedule various elements of the region—Egyptian, Lebanese, Jordanian. People want to see Egyptian drama, programming from the Gulf countries. To me it's a balance between the western elements in the schedule and the non-western. This is a relatively sophisticated audience, and they want to see western production standards. You can't expect them to watch a multi-million-dollar feature film, then sit through a $20,000 drama production. Obviously they can see the difference, no matter how talented the actors and directors are.

Schleifer: How do you see Dubai emerging? MBC is moving, Reuters is making it a regional hub, Middle East Business News, and others. Do you see Dubai as a serious player?

Ritchie: The major reasons for people relocating there are cost and the tax environment, which is extremely good, and the infrastructure to support them. My first boss in television said to me that the viewer doesn't really care where the programs are produced. To me the big issues about where you're based and where you're transmitting from are, first, cost. MBC went to London, others went to Rome, and we were caught with high taxes—political independence, yes, but with a high cost base. Dubai, in contrast, is offering a low cost base, a good tax agenda, and political freedom as well. Cairo and Beirut are two obvious places for production, as they offer relatively low costs and most of the facilities, plus audiences, guests, and technical production talent. But sometimes those places aren't as inexpensive as you might imagine them to be. You have to look at the total package. After cost the biggest issue is how close you are to your audience—not geographically, but how plugged in are you, how plugged in your newsroom and production staff are to an area. You get a different view of things if you've spent the last ten years in London than you do if you're based in Cairo, Beirut, Amman. The classic broadcasting success story is always to be closer to your customer.

Schleifer: You have a unique service at APTN, which is Middle East Custom Coverage. How is this developing?

Ritchie: Initially it was more customized; we provided reporters and did pieces to camera. More and more we're providing the facilities—the satellite links, feeds, studios—but not so much the actual reports to camera. The market is changing. This doesn't happen just in the Arab world, but people will afford their own journalist/reporter in the obvious places like Jerusalem or Washington, but in the other 98 percent of the world don't want the cost of their own person there. How else, therefore, will they get the material they need to have if a story comes up there. If there's an earthquake in El Salvador, they'll want the pictures, we provide that service, and we'll get an Arabic-speaker in front of the camera.

I still see the Arab world for us as a growth opportunity. We still provide better services, we provide tailored services that are unique within the region, and we have felt in the last year or so that there is a greater appetite for this than ever before. We want to grow on that, and I think that's what we'll do. TBS

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An interview with Ian Ritchie, CEO, APTN