continued: Interview with Rashid Murooshid, Managing Director, and Stephen Marney, Director of News and Program Development, EDTV Business Channel
page 2 of 2 / page 1

Schleifer: Do you cover any stock markets now for the Arab world and globally?

Marney: Yes, we do we follow the stock markets. Our programming now is improving and increasing to the stage where we will be 24 hours and can follow the world in the way the sun does. When the sun rises in the morning we will just follow it around the world, look at the stocks, look at the movements, look at the markets and analyze them, again with a perspective from the Arab world.

Schleifer: Egypt is 50 percent of the Arab population and also has a very active stock market—probably the most exciting, not maybe not the greatest volume, but the most exciting market. Are you thinking of boosting your coverage of Egypt?

Murooshid: We are negotiating now with the Egyptian stock market to carry live coverage of the daily analysis, plus if we can get a deal with the Egyptian reports to display their numbers and figures on the screen. We are still waiting for the new building which has just been opened which is going to be operating in the next few weeks as far as I am concerned and we are looking very seriously to get something out of there. On a daily basis with we probably have analysis from Egypt which is the biggest stock market and also discussing and negotiating and trying to get a deal also from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia because they have a big market too.

Schleifer: If you want to "follow the sun" and also if you want to play the role you mentioned earlier where you are the source of ongoing information for European businessmen or American businessmen or Japanese businessmen who are interested in the Arab world, I would think that an accompanying website would become very critical to your operation. What are you doing on that issue?

Murooshid: We are now constructing a large information-based website which should be launched by the end of the summer.

Schleifer: What sort of response have you gotten from the viewers since Steven joined the team?

Murooshid: The response from our viewers has been positive from day one of the channel's launch. I think that the numbers have been growing since last year, since the launch, and there have been some dramatic changes since Steven came.

Schleifer: One thing I've noticed is that you used to have non-financial news or even non-news sometimes as filler, which was a bit shocking. You would turn to the channel expecting news or background or analysis and would see something that had nothing at all to do with news.

Murooshid: You probably were watching the channel outside of its transmission hours. We're now transmitting fourteen hours a day. Concerning your point about the channel not covering financial news all the time, we work differently from CNBC or CNNfn. We have our viewers who are still more interested in political news than the Western viewer, so we still have to give him that half an hour of political news.

Schleifer: Even without an economic spin on it?

Murooshid: It has a spin, but we can't ignore what is happening in the Middle East. No matter what, people still want to know what is happening in Jerusalem. There is always news, you cannot ignore that, there is always a political side—without which our viewers might switch the TV off.

Marney: The development of any TV channel is very sequential. What we have now is a series of very well-produced programs, and as Rashid said we have a good group of very professional people working with us, and we have some very specifically tailored programs—we can now promote to our audience that we have news on the hour at the top of the hour. So people will now know when to tune in to watch our economic news or our political news. We are able to promote those programs because we are not running 24 hours—people won't want to watch around the clock. Twenty-four-hour stations are there for people to dip in and to dip out. Because we are digital and because we are global we know that somewhere somebody in the world is going to want to watch one of our programs at any given time. So the development of our programming again starts from day one and is sequential, and some of the research that we are doing will indicate to us what kind of programs we should put in what you might want to call the back half hour because all our bulletins are half-hour bulletins now. We have half-hour business, half hour news, we have local Gulf report programs—which is very important to fly the flag in the Gulf, news about what's going on right here right now. Because when it is all said and done—and this partly answers your question about why we're coming from Dubai—it is the most exciting place in the Middle East right now. It's very much a hub for commerce and industry.

Schleifer: It's the most responsive to the challenge and opportunity of global economy.

Marney: Yes. What we are doing is embracing the vision of Dubai as a world player. Dubai is now a world player in broadcasting; it has the Business Channel, and we are a global business channel with world-class quality. I think that is very, very important for this organization and certainly for this part of the world to be respected as being a global broadcaster which is serious about its business news.

Murooshid: The Business Channel has great potential, and I believe within the next year and a half we will be the leader in this part of the world. We should be number one in the field. We want to be the number-one, most-watched serious TV channel, and I think we are getting close every day. TBS