ISSUE 136 | DECEMBER 2021
Licensed by Dubai Development Authority
CELEBRATING Honouring the innovators and changemakers in MENA Media and Entertainment at the 2021 ASBU BroadcastPro Awards
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PROINTRO
GROUP Managing Director Raz Islam raz.islam@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 375 5471 Managing Partner Vijaya Cherian vijaya.cherian@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 375 5472 Director of Finance & Business Operations Shiyas Kareem shiyas.kareem@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 375 5474 EDITORIAL Editor Vijaya Cherian vijaya.cherian@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 55 105 3787 Assistant Editor Urooj Fatima Sub Editor Aelred Doyle ADVERTISING Group Sales Director Sandip Virk sandip.virk@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 50 929 1845 +44 (0) 7516 993 862 DESIGN Art Director Simon Cobon Designer Percival Manalaysay MARKETING & EVENTS Events Producer Paul Godfrey paul.godfrey@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 375 5470 Social Media & Marketing Executive Gladys DSouza gladys.dsouza@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 375 5478 Events Executive Minara Salakhi minara.s@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 433 2856 CIRCULATION & PRODUCTION Production Manager Vipin V. Vijay vipin.vijay@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0)4 375 5713 Data & Distribution Manager Phinson Mathew George phinson.george@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0)4 375 5476 DIGITAL SERVICES Abdul Baeis Sadiq Siddiqui
Welcome Content seemed to dominate the conversation at the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit, and it’s certainly the content players that walked away with most of the prizes at the awards gala we hosted on November 16 at Westin Mina Seyahi. We have heard it said that since 2020, half a billion dollars has been spent on developing Arabic originals just for streaming platforms. Investments in high-value Arabic productions have gone up steadily over the last few years and aggressive investments from MBC and OSN in that space have perhaps inspired more production houses to start catering to that demand. The rise of small media houses that take these Arabic productions to international shores and make them available in partnership with major cable or telco operators in those countries has further fed this appetite. Lebanese production house Cedars Art Production also landed a major coup in October with the sale of the format of Al Hayba – one of its productions – to a leading Turkish production house. As someone who has been part of the BroadcastPro jury for the
last eleven years, I have witnessed an evolution in the quality of the productions from a tech and story point of view. Gone are the patchy abstract stories; today we have wellrounded, sophisticated productions that hold their own against any international production. This is indeed a proud moment for the Arab world, and we had the joy of celebrating some of those truly compelling stories at the ASBU BroadcastPro Awards. As the UAE celebrates its 50th anniversary, it’s also a truly proud moment for the country as high-quality productions helmed by Emirati teams are now making headlines. Al Sununu from Visioneers is a good example, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. BroadcastPro also celebrated several other players who are continuously innovating in terms of both technology and strategy. This issue is an opportunity to relive some of those glorious moments from last month.
Vijaya Cherian, Editorial Director
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ISSUE 136 | DECEMBER 2021
Licensed by Dubai Development Authority
On this month's cover…
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CELEBRATING Honouring the innovators and changemakers in MENA Media and Entertainment at the 2021 ASBU BroadcastPro Awards
The winners of the 2021 ASBU BroadcastPro Awards
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PROCONTENTS
Inside this issue 07 NEWS Gravity Media and Belden provide broadcast solutions for four Qatar stadiums; IBC cancels in-person event in Amsterdam; TVU Networks ties with DMI to provide video footage during Expo 2020; Shahid launches new user interface in French; Progressive Generation Studios launches OTT service for kids in MENA; and more
December 2021 QATAR STADIUMS CHOOSE GRAVITY MEDIA
CAN SUPPORT BROADCAST MENA professionals in broadcast discussed the impact of AI technologies on various aspects of newsgathering, production, contribution and distribution at the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit in Dubai last month
14
07
16 EXPLORING HOW AI TECH
KSA GEARS UP FOR FILM FESTIVAL
TECH LEADERS EXPLORE THE POWER OF AI IN BROADCAST AND STREAMING
16 OTT CHIEFS ON HOW TO TAKE STREAMING TO THE NEXT LEVEL
22 CRACKING THE
OTT STRATEGY As more streamers enter the market and consumers subscribe to multiple services, the OTT panel explored the means to crack navigation and how to ensure subscribers stick around
22 THE CHAMPIONS OF THE 2021 ASBU BROADCASTPRO AWARDS
28 WINNERS OF 2021 ASBU BROADCASTPRO AWARDS A closer look at those who bagged the awards this year
40 GV X ME TECH SUMMIT Grass Valley's top management came together with MENA leaders to discuss industry challenges, regional needs and the path to IP and cloud
28 MENA INDUSTRY EXECUTIVES DISCUSS IP AND CLOUD WITH GRASS VALLEY
46 GUEST COLUMN Alaa Al Rantisi explores how demand has cropped up in new sectors for production equipment in recent times
40 December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com |
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PRONEWS
Gravity Media and Belden provide broadcast solutions for Qatar stadiums Belden Inc and Gravity Media have announced their involvement in four major stadiums hosting the 2022 World Cup. In 2010, it was announced that Qatar would host it, and Gravity Media and Belden were then awarded the projects to deliver broadcast systems for the four stadiums. Since then, Qatar has been a hive of activity as it equips the host stadiums with the latest broadcast technology. The one-year countdown to the opening of the world’s biggest football tournament kicked off on November 21. Gravity Media partnered with its long-term supplier Belden to design, supply, install, test and commission
The Ahmed bin Ali stadium in Qatar.
the broadcast cabling systems for the opening match venue Al Bayt Stadium, Al Thumama Stadium, Khalifa International Stadium and Ahmed bin Ali Stadium. Gravity Media shaped the project design using input from local broadcasters and its expertise with high-profile international federations.
Eamonn Dowdall, Executive Director for Gravity Media, said: “It was an honour to be involved in such prestigious projects. With the combined expertise of Belden and Gravity Media, the solutions provided will support the stadiums’ needs well into the future.” The installations required
Belden’s broadcast solutions, including SMPTE, Triax, Video, Multi-Core Audio and single-mode fibre cable, enabling host broadcasters to connect their facilities to 50+ camera positions in each of the stadiums, which include interviews, arrivals and other off-field activities. This will enable broadcasters to transmit content to billions of fans around the world while simultaneously future-proofing the stadiums’ systems for long-term, sustainable use. Four matches will be played each day during the group stage. The tournament will last 28 days and culminate on December 18, 2022, the National Day of Qatar.
IBC cancels in-person event in Amsterdam
TVU Networks ties with DMI to provide video footage during Expo 2020
IBC has announced that its in-person event due to take place on December 3-6 in Amsterdam has been cancelled. The move follows growing concerns about the Covid-19 situation in the Netherlands, which has deteriorated in recent weeks, and feedback from the IBC exhibitor and visitor community. The IBC Partnership Board made the decision to prevent exhibitors and visitors from travelling. In a mail to exhibitors, Steve Connolly, Sales Director at IBC, said: “IBC 2021 will now take place on IBC Digital and will include its AI-based exhibitor platform that allows exhibitors to show their latest products and innovations, plus a comprehensive content programme and the opportunity to meet and connect with the industry.”
TVU Networks has partnered with Dubai Media Incorporated (DMI) to provide exclusive footage from the six-monthlong global festival, Expo Dubai 2020, which began on October 1. In conjunction with DMI, it is sourcing video footage from the region to anyone around the world interested in seeing the event. Two live video sources from Dubai TV are being offered to TVU MediaSource and TVU Grid customers, as well as TVU Search subscribers free of charge. TVU Networks is offering its TVU One 4K HDR 5G mobile transmitters to visitors
for rent or purchase, as well as solutions within its cloud-based video production ecosystem: TVU Partyline, TVU Producer, TVU Server and TVU Grid. Paul Shen, CEO of TVU Networks, said: “This is an incredible opportunity for TVU. This is a high-profile cultural event that showcases a country’s most compelling developments. We’re proud to stand alongside such known innovators. Live feeds enabled by our cloud-based solutions are helping broadcasters bring the excitement of this exhibition to their viewers and the world.”
December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 7
PRONEWS
Shahid announces new user interface in French Streaming platform Shahid from MBC Group will now have a French interface in addition to Arabic and English. Aimed at users from territories including North Africa, Europe, Canada and the Levant, the brand-new French interface comes with a host of features similar to those available in Arabic and English. Not only will Shahid and Shahid VIP subscribers be able to navigate the service
in French, but they will also be able to access their favourite new programmes subtitled in their preferred language. Shahid is also adding new French and North African series and other shows over the coming months. New releases – either in French or subtitled in French – include French drama Stalk, AlgerianSyrian drama series Ward Aswad and French thriller series Inside.
OSN to stream Turkish series exclusively on app OSN will bring Turkish dramas across a wide range of genres, including crime thrillers, romance and action, exclusively to its streaming app. Darine ElKhatib, Senior VP of Arabic Services & Original Production at
OSN, said: “The Turkish TV genre has delivered some of the Middle East’s most compelling shows, capturing the hearts and minds of viewers throughout the region. The rich storylines, depth of characters,
Thalath Qurush is one of the new additions to OSN's raft of Turkish content.
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edgy plot twists and brilliant production leave audiences emotionally hooked and wholly connected to their favorite series. At OSN, this is what we call premium content; we understand the audience’s anticipation to watch the latest episode the minute it’s released. We are committed to bringing premium entertainment to the region that resonates with their needs.” New Turkish additions include Thalath Qurush (Three Pennies Üç Kuruş), Al Qada’a (Yargı), Al-Tufah-Al Haram (Yasak Elma – The Forbidden Fruit), Ikhwati (Kardeşlerim) and Fatat Al Nafitha (Camdaki Kiz).
Signiant acquires Levels Beyond The acquisition will see Levels Beyond’s talent and technology used to extend the functionality of Signiant’s SaaS platform, adding new capabilities for simplifying and modernising media workflows. Commenting on the company’s second acquisition of 2021, Signiant CEO Margaret Craig said: “By virtue of our underlying acceleration technology and broad-based role in the global flow of media, Signiant can provide customers with a foundation that addresses multiple supply chain challenges efficiently and at scale. Our SaaS platform has critical mass, it serves as the core of the B2B media ecosystem, and it is the ideal anchor point for adjacent mediacentric functionality.” The company recently acquired Lesspain Software to facilitate organising, finding and interacting with media assets, and the Levels Beyond acquisition extends Signiant’s offerings to include a range of configurable workflow building blocks. Signiant Chief Solutions Officer Mike Flathers added: “By leveraging Levels Beyond's knowhow and the Signiant SaaS platform, we can give customers a much lighterweight, more productised approach to workflow implementation.”
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PRONEWS
MBC Group signs deal with COFE App MBC Group has partnered with COFE App, an online coffee-centric marketplace which currently serves across the UAE, KSA and Kuwait. The partnership will see the broadcast network support the digital app in achieving its growth strategy through MBC’s channels, digital platforms and events. While the network will play a crucial role in adding scale and visibility to COFE’s growth trajectory, this deal will also give MBC investment priority in COFE App’s future funding rounds. COFE’s collaboration with MBC Group is the first of a series of key
Saudi authority approves NEOM AAA video game project Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Competition (GAC) has approved a project to implement, manage, operate and develop a video game studio in NEOM. The JV between NEOM and MBC Initiatives will be the first AAA video gaming project in the Middle East. The Authority gave approval to the economic concentration process between the two entities following a study of the Kingdom’s video game market and the issues concerning competition in the sector.
COFE App CEO Ali Al Ebrahim (l) and Fadel Zahreddine, Group Director of Emerging Media at MBC Group.
partnerships that support the startup to establish an even stronger footing in the beverage tech arena. Commenting on this milestone in COFE App’s growth journey, Founder and CEO Ali Al Ebrahim said: “This partnership marks a
pivotal milestone for the COFE brand. We believe we can become a market leader in the beverage technology space across the region and beyond, and can only reach our goal with the support of the vast network of channels and
Lebanese TV station Al Manar chooses Etere ETX for upgrade Al Manar will upgrade its existing Imagine playout system with Etere’s channel-in-abox software. After a series of demonstrations and evaluations, Al Manar decided to replace its existing playout facilities with Etere ETX. Al Manar continues to leverage Etere technologies to maximise efficiencies and monetisation opportunities. Etere ETX integrates all the playout features
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needed to bring a channel on-air, including ingest, 4K playout, closed caption/ subtitling insertions, dynamic overlays, text over recorded/live videos, and NDI, IP and SDI inputs/ outputs in a single piece of software. Etere ETX will also replace the already outdated Imagine Nexio video servers.
partners of the MBC brand.” The partnership with COFE App is part of MBC’s plan to actively explore new media and emerging types of content, services and events to aid regional businesses in offering innovative and up-to-date products and services for customers. Fadel Zahreddine, Group Director of Emerging Media at MBC Group, said: “MBC believes that innovation in responding to consumer behaviour is the essence of entrepreneurial digital solutions. MBC is committed to supporting and elevating regional entrepreneurs through visibility.”
Saudi Film Commission picks The Tambour of Retribution as Oscars candidate Saudi Film Commission has chosen the feature film The Tambour of Retribution (Had Al Tar) to represent the Kingdom in the Best International Film category at the Oscars. Films competing for the award will pass through several screening stages before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences chooses the final list. The winner will be announced at the 94th Oscars that will be held at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles on March 27.
PRONEWS
Progressive Generation Studios in Jordan launches OTT service for kids Jordan-based Progressive Generation Studios will launch a new streaming service called PG Kids for children in the Middle East and North Africa on January 1, 2022. At the time of launch, the subscriptionbased streaming service will have more than 100,000 minutes of original content in Arabic and English. After having distributed original content through linear broadcasters and other third parties since 2006, Progressive Generation Studios decided to gather all its original content in one place and
offer it directly to audiences across the MENA region. “We want to create one of the world’s biggest streaming services for children’s content in both Arabic and English, providing a safe online space for edutainment. Working together with Red Bee, this is now becoming a reality,” commented Ahmad Al Masri, CEO, Progressive Generations Studios. “With more than 15 years of experience, and over 100,000 minutes of original content in our portfolio, we are ready to introduce PG Kids to the world. Red Bee helped
us set up a subscriptionbased ser-vice quickly, with broadcast-quality streams and precise personalisation and recommendation functionality.” PG Kids will be available at less than USD 5 per subscription. All content is protected through Red Bee’s advanced geo blocking and digital rights management (DRM) functionality. As an add-on, Progressive Generation Studios also offers merchandise related to their original content through PG-merch.com. “We’re happy that
Progressive Generation Studios chose Red Bee as its OTT partner for PG Kids and we look forward to seeing the service grow and evolve,” commented Houssam al Khaled, Head of Sales and Operations, Market Area Middle East, Red Bee. “Direct-to-consumer streaming is absolutely booming at the moment and with support from our OTT Services content owners and creators all over the world are transforming their business model, reaching larger audiences and monetising their assets in new ways.”
Netflix to celebrate Arab cinema with launch of award-winning collection Netflix will launch a new collection of Arab films titled Celebrating Arab Cinema on December 9. The collection will include 58 films that have been recognised at various prestigious global awards ceremonies and film festivals. The collection includes films from renowned filmmakers such as Nadine Labaki, Annemarie Jacir, Elia Suleiman, Hany AbuAssad and Ziad Doueiri, as well as many recognisable titles such as The Present, Lift Like a Girl and White Helmets. It builds on the previously released Prestige collection 2020, celebrating outstanding talent from different parts of the Arab
world and their iconic stories. Nuha El Tayeb, Director of Content Acquisitions, Turkey and MENA at Netflix said: "Each year, the entertainment community and cinephiles around the world turn their attention to global award ceremonies such as the Academy Awards, the BAFTAs, Cannes,
Venice and more. All eyes are on the films, no matter where they’re from and what they’re about, welcoming authentic storytelling from all parts of the world. "We pride ourselves on giving people the opportunity to experience the content they may not have had a chance to see.
"The collection isn’t just fictional stories but also includes powerful documentaries, such as the exploration of first responders in war-torn Syria in White Helmets, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject. The Celebrating Arab Cinema collection brings together the best from the Arab world. "Many of these movies were also selected to represent their country in the Academy Award submissions for Best International Feature Film, spanning different parts of the Arab world covering Egyptian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Jordanian and Iraqi stories."
December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 11
PRONEWS
MBC Studios, JB Pictures and AGC Studios team up for Desert Warrior MBC Studios, the production arm of MBC Group, has partnered with US studio JB Pictures and AGC Studios to produce Desert Warrior, an action-thriller feature film set in seventh-century Arabia. MBC Studios’ biggest production to date, it is also the first tentpole film to be shot at NEOM in KSA, a new milestone for MBC Group. It is supported by the NEOM Media Industries Sector, with major productions a catalyst for the development of the regional media industries epicentre at Neom. The international title – which has just commenced filming in Neom and Tabuk
Desert Warrior, featuring Anthony Mackie and Aiysha Hart, will be the first tentpole film to be shot at NEOM in KSA.
– features Anthony Mackie (Avengers: Endgame, The Banker) and Aiysha Hart (Mogul Mowgli, Colette). JB Pictures’ Bolt commented: “Desert Warrior will give audiences a ringside seat to one of the most
dramatic and consequential battles in history. Spectacular action and great bravery set against stunning mountainous desert landscapes.” Wayne Borg, Managing Director, Media Industries at NEOM, stated: “Attracting
Media Mania chooses Ross Video solution for OB van
Roland Daou (c) of Media Mania, flanked by Benoit Rousseil (l), Regional Sales Director SEUR, and Deepraj Sandhar (r), Regional Manager of Ross Video.
UAE production company Media Mania has selected Ross Video’s Hyperconverged production platform for its new state-of-the-art 12G 4K UHD OB van. After spending more than 12 months reviewing broadcast industry vendors
and the various solutions they offer, Media Mania decided to invest in Ross Video’s latest Ultrix Acuity Hyperconverged production platform, a new production solution that combines the company’s flagship Acuity production switcher with the software-defined Ultrix
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routing/AV processing product. This solution will form the backbone of a new OB truck that will be used to create international sports productions throughout the Gulf region and beyond. Roland Daou, CEO of Media Mania, said: “After many months of assessing the broadcast industry, it was clear that Ross Video’s local team in the region and the innovative softwaredefined technology met our technical and operational requirements. We are delighted to put our third OB van on the road to start producing exciting and innovative productions all over the Middle East.”
a production of the scale of Desert Warrior as our first feature film highlights the confidence the film industry has in our ability to deliver a seamless production experience. Our fresh and diverse locations, worldclass production team and attractive incentives make NEOM a very appealing destination for screen production.” Filming for Desert Warrior commenced on September 12 and is expected to continue until the end of this year. AGC International, the international sales and distribution arm of AGC Studios, will handle worldwide sales.
Palestinian film Amira wins in Rome Palestinian film Amira, directed by Egyptian director Mohamed Diab, received an Amnesty International human rights award and a special mention from a jury that included university students from Rome at the 27th MedFilm Festival in Rome. Amira is Diab’s third film as a director, after 678 (2010) and his 2016 hit Clash (Eshtebak). The film is a co-production between Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and was shot entirely in Jordan.
PROFESTIVAL
Saudi Arabia gears up for Red Sea International Film Festival The inaugural lineup Saudi Arabia’s first large-scale film festival, in partnership with Vox Cinemas, MBC Group and Saudia Airlines, has announced the programme for its inaugural edition, which will run 6-15 December in Jeddah. The Red Sea International Film Festival will feature 138 feature films and shorts from 67 countries in 34 languages from both established and emerging talent, and will host 25 world premieres, 48 Arab premieres and 17 GCC premieres, with a number of filmmakers and actors in attendance for many of the films. Cyrano, a musical romantic drama directed by award-winning British director Joe Wright and written by Erica Schmidt, based on her 2018 stage musical, will raise the curtain. The festival will close with the world premiere of acclaimed Egyptian director Amr Salama’s Bara El Manhag. A slate of 27 new films from Saudi filmmakers will be shown alongside the best of new international cinema. The lineup of features and shorts will open a window for international guests to explore all aspects of Saudi society, and provide a vital platform
Whisper Down the Lane, directed by Raghad Albarqi, will be part of the Saudi shorts lineup.
A still from Quareer by Ragheed Al Nahdi, which will be screened as part of the New Saudi Cinema section.
for Saudi filmmakers to present their work on the big screen to the global film industry and local audiences. Alongside the Red Sea Competition, red carpet galas and special presentations, the festival will host a range of cinema in the following sections: Festival Favourites, New Saudi/New Cinema, Red Sea Treasures, Red Sea Arab and International Spectacular, Red Sea Next Generation, Red Sea Immersive and Red Sea Episodic. The Arab and international competition will showcase the highest creative achievements from an array of filmmakers in its Red Sea Feature and Shorts Competition sections. The lineup of 18 shorts and 16 features showcases compelling works produced in the past year. Winners in each competition will be selected by juries and announced on December 13. The festival will also celebrate women in film, with two very special talents honoured – Saudi filmmaker Haifaa AlMansour and Egyptian actress Laila Eloui. The Red Sea Souk, the Festival’s industry market, will consist of the Project Market, with pitching and meetings for a selection of 23 films in development, and Works-in-Progress Screenings, rough cuts of a selection of films in post-production. More than $800,000 will be awarded to the projects selected in the Red Sea Souk Awards.
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The Red Sea Souk will also welcome a series of key players to lead discussions on a range of topics including the global content boom and demand for content creators, the post-pandemic industry and sustainable media production. It will also showcase over 20 local and regional exhibiting companies including buyers, sales agents, film commissions, distributors and exhibitors. Immediately following the Souk on December 12-13, the festival will hold Talent Days, a two-day initiative designed to support the development of the next generation of Saudi filmmakers.
Red Sea Immersive explores VR world Red Sea Immersive, the programming strand of the Red Sea International Film Festival, has announced a 21-strong programme of virtual reality experiences, and will run December 7-15 at Jeddah’s new creative complex, Hayy Jameel. It will introduce immersive storytelling experiences to audiences in Jeddah, while also serving as an inspiration and catalyst to future immersive content creators and studios from the region. Thirteen of the most significant VR works produced in 2021 will be
PROFESTIVAL
The International Spectacular section
The Good Boss, written and directed by Fernando León de Aranoa, is part of the International Spectacular.
presented in competition for the Golden Yusr Immersive Award, which will include a cash prize of $10,000 with eight projects presented out of competition. The programme is curated by Liz Rosenthal, curator of Venice VR at the Venice International Film Festival. Red Sea Immersive will be adjudicated by an all-female jury of three leading international artists. The jury will be presided over by American avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson, joined by BAFTAwinning director Victoria Mapplebeck and one of the first Saudi Arabian street artists, Sarah Mohanna Al Abdali. The 13 immersive storytelling experiences being presented in the competition are Anandala, End of Night, Genesis, Glimpse, Goliath: Playing with Reality, Kusunda, Laika, Lavrynthos, Le Bal de Paris de Blanca Li, Marco & Polo Go Round, Reeducated, Samsara (Lun Hui) and The Sick Rose. The inaugural Red Sea International Film Festival will take place in Jeddah December 6-15.
This is a curated collection of some of the year’s most powerful stories from iconic, award-winning international filmmaking voices. All eight films will be Arab premieres, showcasing the best of international cinema to the Arab world. Edouard Waintrop, Artistic Director of RedSeaIFF, said: “The stories told in these films, over half of which are from female filmmakers, portray a vibrant and diverse array of views and we are thrilled to be able to showcase them all at the Festival.” The lineup consists of Giuseppe Tornatore’s Ennio; Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour; French-Algerian director Yamina Benguigui’s latest film Sisters; Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut The Lost Daughter; Belfast, written and directed by Academy Award nominee Kenneth Branagh; Spanish comedy The Good Boss, written and directed by Fernando León de Aranoa; You Resemble Me, the directorial debut of EgyptianAmerican filmmaker and award-winning journalist Dina Amer; and The Colour Room, directed by Claire McCarthy.
The New Saudi Cinema section The world premieres of selected films from talented up-and-coming Saudis will be among the 27 films presented at the inaugural festival. Each screening
You Resemble Me is the directorial debut of Egyptian-American filmmaker and award-winning journalist Dina Amer.
will be accompanied by a Q&A from the filmmakers or cast, aiming at showcasing and celebrating emerging Saudi talent. Mohyee Qari, Programme Manager at RedSeaIFF, said: “The Saudi programme of feature and short films, of which many are directed by female filmmakers, speak to the very best of Saudi filmmaking. They don’t hesitate to explore the different genres of cinema ranging from suspense to thriller, to social themes and relationships, to show us Saudi society in its richness. They indicate an industry that is flourishing, both in terms of the diversity and content on screen, and point to the bright future that this young film industry has. We are thrilled to be able to give these filmmakers a platform to share their work on the international stage.” These films include Junoon by directors Maan B. and Yaser B. Khalid; Route 10 by Omar Naim; Quareer by Ragheed Al Nahdi, Norah Almowald, Ruba Khafagy, Fatma Alhazmi and Noor Alameer; Fay’s Palette by Anas Ba-Tahaf; Becoming by Sara Mesfer, Jawaher Alamri, Noor Alameer, Hind Alfahhad and Fatima Al-Banawi; Kayan by Hakeem Jomaah; and Cinema Al-Hara by Faizah Ambah. PRO
December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 15
PROAI
BROADCASTPRO SUMMIT: A PLACE TO EXPLORE INDUSTRY SECRETS The summit has long served as a regional platform for the industry to exchange ideas and experiences on evolving trends in the market and each edition has drawn a larger international audience. This year's summit discussions will be carried across two editions of BroadcastPro.
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PROAI
EXPLORING THE POWER OF AI
AI experts across MENA broadcast gathered to look at the impact of this evolving technology on various aspects of newsgathering, production, contribution and distribution. Nicolas Hans, Partner at Broadcast Solutions Middle East and Africa, and the moderator of this panel sums up the discussion for us
BROADCAST SOLUTIONS
Nicolas Hans
E XPO 2020
Esteban Galan
ASHARQ NE WS
DISCOVERY, ME A AND TURKE Y
Kathey Battrick
TÜRK TELEKOM
Umut Keten
AI is the new electricity. It has become ubiquitous in every consumer’s life. With every tweet, Facebook post or social media swipe, an AI recommendation engine is involved. The recent Facebook Files from the Wall Street Journal demonstrated AI’s impact on our collective perception of reality. Beyond social media platforms, AI is booming across all industries. Society is experiencing the fourth wave of AI. The first started a decade ago with internet AI ruling web sites and mobile apps; four years later, business AI affected financial services, medical,
VITEC
Bassem Maher
Fadi Jumaa
NE WSBRIDGE
Frederic Petitpont
logistics and back-office systems. Then five years ago, perception AI rolled out across smart homes, smart cities and smart factories. Today, the fourth wave, autonomous AI, has led to the boom in drones, robotics and autonomous vehicles. The broadcast industry is no stranger to the AI revolution, and Netflix claims to save a billion dollars every year thanks to cognitive technologies. To better tackle the state of AI technology across broadcast and streaming media, the technology panel at the ASBU BroadcastPro summit featured three media professionals, one telecom operator and two technologists.
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Kathey Battrick, Senior Manager, Library and Media Management at Asharq News, shared her experience deploying AI in her archiving department. Bassem Maher, Head of Operations Discovery, MEA and Turkey, explained how AI is supporting the launch of the Discovery+ OTT offering. Esteban Galan, Lead Manager, Broadcast Technical, Media Services, Expo 2020, explored how media distribution and live production are both affected by AI services. These media professionals were complemented by Umut Keten, Senior Architect at Türk Telekom, who shared his insights on how neural networks are used to monitor internet and mobile telephony networks, and two technologists: Fadi Jumaa, Director of Business Development at VITEC, and Frederic Petitpont, CTO of Newsbridge, a French startup specialising in content indexing using Multimodal AI. We were keen to understand what AI stands for and how it is already in use across media organisations. From setting the stage to going under the hood and exploring the challenges AI presents, the debate was lively.
“It is predicted that the AI market in the sports industry will grow 30% every year until 2027. It will reach $3.5bn” Esteban Galan, Lead Manager, Broadcast Technical, Media Services, Expo 2020 AI is not new; it turned 65 this year Since the start of the year, $50bn has been invested in AI, according to the CB Insights ‘State of AI’ Q3 2021 report. According to PWC, AI will create $15.7tn in value by 2030. And things are accelerating. As an AI evangelist, Umut Keten from Türk Telekom sees AI as generally misunderstood. “Everybody thinks AI is like a consciousness or something human-like, when the basic principle of AI is much simpler. AI is just a way for a machine to decide on its own without human intervention.” For Frederic Petitpont from
The panel agreed that AI's carbon footprint appears to be high.
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Newsbridge, the reasons for the boom in AI technology in the last decade were not limited to the increase in CPU and GPU power and the availability of cloud resources. Code sharing and increased collaboration across organisations are essential drivers of this AI renaissance. “Science laboratories and universities are sharing how they're working and designing their systems. You're no longer starting from scratch anymore.” All agree that the new approach to AI – which has partially abandoned the development of rule-based engines for neural networks – relies first and foremost on the relevance of datasets. These datasets are critical because they are used to train AI engines and are the cornerstone of the concept of machine learning. “Neural networks are the engine and datasets the oil,” concluded Petitpont. AI speech-to-text and translation are changing archives and distribution At Asharq, which launched just a year ago, Kathey Battrick went all-in with AI when she set up the archives department. “We wanted to use
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AI to help us preserve and create rich metadata for our content. We considered three key areas: labels and the flexibility to customise metadata; people and the possibility to reference new faces and personalities; proper support for both English and Arabic.” For Esteban Galan from Expo 2020 Dubai, automatic translation of metadata and transcripts across the three official languages of the exhibition – Arabic, English and French – was the “coolest feature”. He detailed how AI combined with cloud infrastructure facilitates the distribution of videos and stills to media organisations worldwide, to promote the image and increase the reach of Expo 2020. Bassem Maher explained that the focus for implementing AI at Discovery is primarily distribution and enhancing the consumer experience, with the recent launch of the Discovery+ OTT platform and the creation of new services across Siri and Alexa digital assistants. Although he recognised that AI for production was still a work in progress, he projected a coming adoption to manage the seventy languages Discovery broadcasts in. He was confident about the roll-out, considering that Discovery operates 160 channels on AWS and can easily leverage cloud AI services. AI is changing the world of sport Galan, who has been involved with the Olympics since 2012, shared the growing impact of AI in sports. “It is predicted that the AI market in the sports industry will grow 30% every year until 2027. It will reach $3.5bn.” Convinced that the broadcast industry will follow a similar adoption pattern, he foresees the deployment of AI in live production. “Supercomputing will help, because the power of the processing power is getting much more powerful. The democratisation of the cloud is making storage and access to data much faster, and the deployment of 5G networks will only accelerate that further. I think
A full house at the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit on November 16 at the Westin Mina Seyahi, Dubai.
that when all these are aligned, we will see AI used in high-end productions.” For Fadi Jumaa, the impact of AI on remote production already became a reality at the recent Tokyo Olympics. “We partnered with Eurosport to transmit the Olympics. Because of the Covid crisis, we took live feeds and sent these to commentators in the comfort and safety of their homes. They added their live comments, and the signal was sent back to
Olympic production facilities in Tokyo.” In his eyes, AI technology that streamlines video encoding enables new business models. “Covid dictated this remote production at the Olympics in Tokyo. But later, it was realised as a very viable business model because it saves a lot of money and improves the return on investment broadcasters like Eurosport make buying sports content.”
“We still have manual metadata we create, but it’s vastly complemented by the huge amount of metadata the AI platform could generate for us”
AI helps manage telecom networks and reduce OTT churn As detailed by Umut Keten, AI is already used at scale by telecom operators. “In a telco, the network is big. There can be many outages, and one outage can relate to ten different causes. When operators monitor the network, they may get twenty alarms and little time to determine the root cause of that problem. That’s where AI makes our lives easier.” Beyond monitoring the state of the network, Umut explained how AI helps telcos optimise data traffic for OTT providers: “As an internet provider, we support OTT services. AI monitors user traffic and knows where people connect to, what their latency is and what type of traffic they're downloading. According to that, you can determine which customers have a good experience and which do not. We use this to determine what kind of outages cause customers to churn.” Moving forward, Keten believes that telcos and OTT service providers
Kathey Battrick, Senior Manager, Library and Media Management, Asharq News
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Fadi Jumaa (second from left) commented that the impact of AI on remote production was already evident at the recent Tokyo Olympics.
should collaborate to further optimise AI monitoring. “OTT providers should work closer with the telco providers, deciding where their CDNs should be located. When a leading OTT provider such as Netflix launches a new series like the new season of The Witcher, you can immediately see on the network many people trying to reach one location, all at the same time. Our systems understand that as a denialof-service attack and act accordingly. It just triggers a false positive!” False positives: the AI disease For Petitpont, “False positives are the disease of AI.” He illustrated such false positives by explaining that football player Ángel Di María of Paris Saint-Germain looks like Franz Kafka, and both are identified as the same person by a facial recognition engine. “When it comes to cognitive services, there are different ways to tackle false positives. The first one is feedback learning to improve the dataset, but that requires many actions from users. The second is to improve the quality of your original dataset, improving the quality of the pictures you give the AI to learn from. Finally, the last one is to use multimodal or multi-role AI. With multimodal AI, you don’t limit yourself to the vectors of the face. You use all other available contextual data for better results. Multimodal is used a lot in the medical field. To identify a specific disease, you need to consider all the symptoms.”
From Battrick’s perspective, false positives are not that frequent. “I can't say we've seen a huge volume of false positives. It does happen, but we took the decision early on that we were going to manually review and approve all the people suggested by the AI, to ensure that everything we import back into our media asset management system is 100% accurate.”
“When operators monitor the network, they may get twenty alarms and little time to determine the root cause of that problem. That’s where AI makes our lives easier” Umut Keten, Senior Architect, Türk Telekom
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AI will affect production and change jobs At Asharq, AI is not replacing humans but working for them. “The news librarian or archivist role will not go, and that's never been the intention. We need that role. We still have manual metadata we create, but it's vastly complemented by the huge amount of metadata the AI platform could generate for us.” Not all panellists were as confident of the future impact of AI on jobs. For Galan, “Once we use computer vision for camera tracking, automated highlights, automated graphics, it will reduce the number of people sitting in OB vans and impact live production.” AI has a serious carbon footprint Meanwhile, AI already affects the planet. Petitpont explained: “When you are running on a public cloud provider, it's a challenge to estimate your carbon emissions. We need to decorrelate the time and the energy you need to train the dataset from the resources required to use the engine. Every time a user is using AI, we need to know how energy is consumed.” According to Jumaa, AI can play a role in helping decrease energy consumption: “For the green MPEG GreenPEG initiative, we will incorporate an AI programme that will optimise how much energy is spent by each device. At VITEC, we plan to be carbonneutral by the end of the year.” A brave new world Asked what advice she would give to an editor-in-chief or head librarian deciding to roll out AI technology across their operations, Battrick was blunt. “My first piece of advice is to be brave! Change can be scary. The second one would be to run a good proof of concept and understand your business and user requirements, to make sure that the content or the metadata coming back meets those needs.” PRO
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PROSTREAMING
TAKING STREAMING TO THE NEXT LEVEL With the rise in prominence of streaming services, winning share of time, mind and wallet has become critical in an increasingly crowded market. This panel explored new strategies and discussed how to market, manage and monetise content, and build a subscriber base that sticks around
AMANDA TURNBULL AS SOCIATES
Amanda Turnbull
ATEME
Jean-Louis Lods
STAR ZPL AY
COMCAST TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS
Martin Webb
As more streamers enter the market and consumers subscribe to multiple OTT services, this panel looked at the technical and operational means to crack navigation and discoverability across services. They looked at how to take streaming to the next level. On the panel were Danny Bates, CCO and co-founder of StarzPlay; James Walmsley, Director of Entertainment Products, Intigral; Jean-Louis Lods, VP Media Supply Chain Solutions at ATEME; Martin Webb, Senior Product Manager, Cloud TV, Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS); Nadine Samra,
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INTIGR AL
Danny Bates
James Walmsley
WE Y YAK BY ZEE
Nadine Samra
VIU
Rohit D’silva
Chief Business Officer, Weyyak by Zee; and Rohit D’silva, Chief Business Officer, Middle East & South Africa, Viu. Moderator Amanda Turnbull, CEO Amanda Turnbull Associates, first took the audience through an overview of the current status of streaming services in the region and how platforms are trying to stand out from the crowd. Directing her first query at Rohit D’silva, she asked him to elaborate on his ‘staying in lane’ stance with Viu. “The reason this space is competitive is because it is obviously the present and the future of this industry. We have experienced
PROSTREAMING
intense competition in Southeast Asia, where you have the big global giants on the one hand and the big Chinese players on the other. And in that space, we have found a way to be in and we enjoyed over 50 million MAUs for H1 and second in terms of streaming minutes,” D’silva said, adding that remaining focused on content relevant to the space in which Viu is operating, and identifying the right kind of content, is vital. “As this game gets more competitive, we would rather stay in lane and make sure we have as much fuel as possible, as in money, and we think being focused and delivering on that proposition is where we are best suited.” Viu offers an AVOD and SVOD model, which D’silva says is ideal for this market. “Consumers have the option of staying on in the free layer or moving up. So there’s space to grow and scale within that segment ... Also, because consumption is led by a mobile device, an easy entry and easy exit is important to take streaming to the next level.” Nadine Samra, who heads Weyyak, an Arabic-language AVOD-SVOD service built within the Zee entertainment framework, said the platform has been going from strength to strength thanks to its Indian content. The team has built on that with investment in Arabic original productions as well as dubbing Indian content. “The huge library of Indian content we have is our main USP. We are also investing heavily in a lot of Arabic originals; we have localised our product so that people feel like it’s their own,” she commented. Weyyak has also acquired a lot of Arabic originals from the GCC, Syria and Egypt, and Samra added that the team has been very active on the content side, the marketing side, the telco partnership side and the advertising side. As a vendor, Turnbull questioned how Comcast Technology Solutions
“Our acquisition costs are one-sixth to one-seventh of the standard acquisition cost on sport. It has made a real difference to our acquisition strategy and how we onboard customers onto our platform” Danny Bates, CCO and co-founder, StarzPlay was connecting the world and what was essential in order to achieve flexibility and agility for streaming services. As the CTS cloud TV solutions unites them with global brands across all segments, Martin Webb offered four recommendations. First, you need to be where your audience is, which means being present on smart TVs, not just mobile devices. “Our white paper, called Riding the Premium Content Wave, focused specifically on this region and showed how large-screen viewing, which made less than 20% of overall video consumption before
the pandemic, grew to over 70% at the peak and even now has only fallen back to 50%. Therefore, ensuring functionality to target all screens in a uniform manner is essential in that time, device and place shifting won’t be barriers to content consumption.” Second, we must be responsive to emerging ideas in the market, and companies must be ready from a tech and organisation point of view to adapt to those changing trends. Third, he recommended building one-to-one relationships with consumers, urging broadcasters to create an aggregated and anonymised dataset – but most importantly be holistic, and be able to track consumer consumption across the whole catalogue. “You don’t want silos in that data.” Finally, platforms must be open to adopting flexible business models. The single-tier SVOD market has moved on, and since consumers have limits to SVOD stacking, AVOD offers that beachhead to get one’s service in, he pointed out. He added: “Cloud gives you that unifying point to target all these platforms in a single way. From where we see it, broadcasters and operators are on a digital transformation
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The OTT panel brought together a mix of stakeholders who explored strategies to up the streaming game.
journey, where online becomes a core part of their overall strategy. Being in the cloud with the right kind of video platform is important in order to achieve scalability with highly concurrent events, because those platforms use micro services, although that misses out programmability. We would advocate using micro services where each service is opened up so that services are combined like interlocking bricks, allowing the video platform to adapt to your strategy rather than forcing your strategy to adapt to the video platform.” As platforms scale, there are also some fundamentals of technology that will help create that finer viewer experience. Jean-Louis Lods stepped in to elaborate. “At ATEME, we really work and focus on the video playing level so the end-to-end experience is important, from the football stadium through to the glass of the user experience. We focus fundamentally on how to make the video experience of the best quality for the user no matter their device, and based on that the quality of the encoding and the timely distribution of that content that quality of experience extends … so, for instance, how quickly does my service start up when I request my programming, which is coming through from the middleware from CTS. And it’s that user experience that really is always going to be so important for platforms as they scale.
“So how does the business scale using the lowest bitrates at the highest quality so the consumer that is consuming the entertainment is having a premium experience while the network costs, the storage costs and everything associated with delivering that service is at the optimal level to enable the platform and the service
“Customers are no longer choosing just a single streaming service and content providers are starting to push their own applications over content buyout agreements in some cases” James Walmsley, Director of Entertainment Products, Intigral
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content providers to really scale their business? You start dovetailing this to the other associated factors around and ask how do you deliver video to the consumer. “We talk about sport, and latency comes into this. It’s very important: how do I not have that spoiler effect where my neighbour has experienced a goal and 10 or 20 seconds later, I see that goal appear on my screen? By offering that end-to-end experience and services of the encoding, origin and packaging of that CDN, we can enable the delivery of services which become ultra-low in latency and match the same delivery technologies as traditional DTT cable and satellite.” Roping James Walmsley in, Turnbull asked about the idea of Intigral becoming a super aggregator and to explain his ‘own the coffee table and not necessarily the screen’ analogy. Providing some perspective, Walmsley said that Intigral has, from the outset, “been building a product that features its own content while also showcasing content from other providers”. “This sums up the next phase of where we want to be. We have been building out Jawwy TV to showcase content from other providers in the way they would want their content presented. We have partnered with StarzPlay for many years, amongst others, and decided to give content owners their own space on our platform rather than curate it as we see fit including ingesting the same genres, categories and promotional carousels they design for their own services. Content owners invest a lot of time and effort into curating their library so it makes sense to us to make sure that is translated to their presentation within Jawwy TV. We also have a very diverse range of customers in diverse countries, demanding a wide variety of content verticals to cater to them and necessitating a different presentation and curation strategy. Providers want
PROSTREAMING
to control the way they sell their content and this plays a little more into where we are going in the future because every service, us included, invest a lot of time in scheduling and curating their content whether it be Arabic, Western or Khaleeji. “Going forward for us, and coming back to the coffee table analogy, we will put as much focus on our content partners as we do on our own library. We realise that the market is evolving; customers are no longer choosing just a single streaming service and content providers are starting to push their own applications over content buyout agreements in some cases. Netflix set the trend in only allowing their content to be showcased by them through their native applications, but other players are moving in that direction, with Amazon Prime and Disney+ launching in this fashion. We want to be ready for this move and be in a position to offer our customers the best of both worlds. By offering customers a great baseline of our own titles, complemented by our partners’ libraries and third-party applications, we believe we can remain at the centre of the customer’s experience
“We are also investing heavily in a lot of Arabic originals; we have localised our product so that people feel like it’s their own” Nadine Samra, Chief Business Officer, Weyyak by Zee even when it’s not our content on the main screen. Of course, this does come with additional challenges, requiring us to think differently about how we measure success, but in the long term we believe this is the best solution we can offer to our current and prospective customer base.” In the meantime, StarzPlay has been partnering with different content partners. Its most recent achievement has been cracking a smart way of getting sports assets on its platform. “The great thing about sport is its organic reach. It has been a big evolution
for us, the customer influx and the acquisition costs,” commented Danny Bates, highlighting a combined organic acquisition of 60-70% subscribers coming into the platform. “Our acquisition costs are one-sixth to one-seventh of the standard acquisition cost on sport. It has made a real difference to our acquisition strategy and how we onboard customers onto our platform. It is really not even about standing out from the crowd, but being part of the crowd.” Turnbull asked what that meant for content navigation and discovery. “We are lucky that our DNA is rooted in digital marketing and performance marketing,” said D’silva. “Everyone runs their funnel differently; the beauty is that there’s no one-size formula that works. We are looking at adjacent industries that will provide us with a user base, such as influencers, who consume things in the way we are all designing products, so this space is moving faster and the good thing is there are more ways to address these issues; the only constant is the need for more money.” Did Weyyak have a slightly
ATEME's Jean-Louis Lods (fourth from left) pointed out that the end-to-end video experience is important to the user irrespective of the device they use, and that ensuring quality of experience will remain important as platforms scale.
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different approach? “I like to tap into the idea of being part of the crowd,” said Samra, “there’s space for us all. The MENA and the Arabic audience can consume multiple OTT services. So out of the eight or six hours that a user spends, if we find half an hour or one hour, we are happy; if we can achieve that, we’re successful.” A creative and experimental attitude has played a predominant role in the Weyyak strategy. “We have adopted a ‘why don’t we try this out’ approach,” commented Samra. “If things don’t work for us, we move on, we learn.” Walmsley agreed with Samra about space for multiple people at different times in a customer’s journey. “In terms of content discovery, the challenge will be a metadata one, but the breadth of content is expanding, technology is also improving, and as we move through the next few years, things will get better.” Creative level changes are taking place in content delivery too, altering viewer features and delivering whole new experiences, Lods highlighted. “We have a thing called film grain synthesis, which takes the noise or the film grain that was captured and put on purpose by the director, that is often not seen by the consumer. We can now synthesise that film grain and reproduce at player level while saving enormously on bandwidth, almost 90%. So delivering the experience to the consumer which is as real as what was endeavoured by the director becomes vitally important about how you differentiate your content and give it a feel of ownership to the actual user.” With all the different content, segmentation and audiences, how are channels bringing content to the fore? Bates pointed out that what was once about acquisition marketing has now evolved into content discovery experience and communication with the customer, curating services, surfacing technology,
“Ensuring functionality to target all screens in a uniform manner is essential in that time, device and place shifting won’t be barriers to content consumption” Martin Webb, Senior Product Manager, Cloud TV, Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) recommendation engines and so on. “It is really about acquisition, getting those big shows, bringing people on; second, giving them something new to stay in; and thirdly, the win-back cycle. Give customers a good experience as they leave, so that they come back.” James countered that while sports in itself is a big draw, providing content and value between actual consumption is crucial to getting subscribers to return. “Retaining that base or bringing them back will be the next big challenge.” Picking on from Walmsley’s point about metadata, Webb stressed the need The cost of sports rights makes it difficult to make it work on OTT, said Rohit D'silva.
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for quality and completeness of metadata, but also highlighted the key element of consistency. “We see situations where fragmentation in how video services are implemented lead to a number of different metadata databases, which can lead to consumer confusion in the content discovery process. So quality is important, but I would like to see consistency too.” Closing, Turnbull asked D’silva if having a ‘good departure’, as Bates had phrased it, chimed with his views. “I have a different perspective on sports. While what the StarzPlay team is doing is fantastic in trying to find new ways to engage with sport, the cost of sports rights makes it difficult to make it work on OTT. Sport can give outsized returns, but you also need an outsized bet. Having said that, like the rest of the streaming services, things will evolve and hopefully sports streaming will become viable in the future.” The discussion ended with how sports services are getting increasingly more pragmatic and how sharing rights costs and partnering with telcos could help build those “outsized” bets to reach wider regions and larger audience bases. PRO
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HONOURING THE WINNERS OF 2021
The ASBU BroadcastPro Awards 2021 edition in Dubai, hosted on November 16, honoured the champions whose passion, ability and tech know-how have taken the industry to an unheralded era of innovation The 11th edition of the ASBU BroadcastPro Awards in Dubai once again proved a powerful barometer of the trends shaping regional broadcasting and streaming. The ‘content is king’ mantra has never felt truer than now, when content innovators are playing an increasingly important role in deciding where the smart money should be spent. With the OTT revolution, new ways of delivering content are introducing a brand new set of dynamics – and on 16 November, the champions of these new working styles were honoured at a gala ceremony at the Westin Mina Seyahi, Dubai. Earlier in the day, the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit focused on critical areas of content curation and delivery, while the content game-changers who excelled with their pioneering spirit were featured in the night’s Awards line-up. The ASBU BroadcastPro Awards do not aim to just acknowledge the big players whose budgets and global outreach lead the way. They also honour the smaller, outlier businesses whose breakthroughs are
paving the way for a new industry landscape. The awards are well-known for their regional scope and each year, BroadcastPro ME tries to celebrate winners across different regional markets. This year saw some remarkable projects from the UAE, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and North Africa that mirrored a number of key initiatives in these countries, with companies at the vanguard of industry ambitions and performance. While two awards were reserved for the satellite segment, 18 awards were given away in the broadcast segment. A big thank you to our judges this year: Afzal Lakdawala, Head of Digital Transformation, ARM Holding; Badih Fattouh, CEO, Creative Venture; Hassan Chahine, founder & CEO, Media Digital Space; Heba Korayem, Content Market Consultant , H.consult; Mustafa Tell, GM of Broadcast Operations, ART, Jordan; Rochdi Nouira, Head Engineer, Deputy Director, Technical Department, Tunisian Radio; Sanjay Raina, Media & Entertainment Consultant; and Vijaya Cherian, Editor, BroadcastPro Middle East.
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Broadcast Awards BEST TV PRODUCTION OF THE YEAR
Qayd Majhoul – OSN Qayd Majhool, OSN’s first Arabic original production, is a psycho-thriller drama series that entertains superbly while also highlighting mental illness – a topic that most producers tend to skirt around for want of knowing how to tackle it appropriately. This production saw renowned Arab celebrities take on intense roles and is testimony to how producers and broadcasters are willing to push the boundaries of storytelling in the MENA region. Besides the innovative storytelling, this one impressed for great direction and high production values. Pictured with the award is Rolla Karam, SVP Content Acquisition – Programming, OSN.
BEST OTT PRODUCTION OF THE YEAR
Nemra Etnein – Shahid This series is an impressive combination of independent stories that bravely explore modern relationships in the Arab world. It received an almost unanimous vote of confidence from the judges over other competing entries for its compelling and bold storytelling, slick look and overall quality of production. Its take on relationships without making any judgements perhaps added to the appeal. The trailer screened at the awards gala was received with loud applause. Ali Ghamloush (l), Head of Originals – Shahid, received the award from Nitin Michael, co-founder of SynProNize.
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Broadcast Awards BEST CONTENT STRATEGY OF THE YEAR
NINETNINE Ninetnine, a young content distribution company, has disrupted the way Arab broadcasters monetise their content overseas. Ninetnine took a dataanalytics approach and helped create targeted TV bundles for the Arab and North African diaspora in Europe and the Americas, adapting them to different markets. Its content strategy helped reshape Arabic content consumption in Europe. More recently, Ninetnine became the exclusive distributor of MBC channels in Europe, with TV rights to its linear channels. For its game-changing approach to catering to the Arab diaspora while helping regional content owners monetise their assets, Ninetnine took home the award. Ninetnine co-founders Adel Hamla (l) and Samir Zehani with the award.
FILM INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR
Italia Film This award was created to recognise a company that has helped to bring audiences back to the big screen through its regional initiatives. Italia Film was the first to get a distribution licence in Saudi Arabia when the country lifted its 35-year ban on cinema. It launched the first movie in Saudi theatres with Black Panther. It still tops the charts for the highest ever grossing movie in the region with Aladdin. Recently, it hit a milestone by being the first distribution company in 2021 to reach more than 2m admissions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia after only nine months of film releases. John Chahine (l), GM, UAE & Gulf Lower region, Italia Film received the award from Hasnaa Descuns, co-founder of SynProNize. December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 31
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Broadcast Awards BEST RADIO INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR
Ministry of Information Affairs – Radio Project, Kingdom of Bahrain This project stood out for the $6.5m makeover that the Kingdom of Bahrain's Ministry of Information Affairs (MIA) undertook in conjunction with systems integrator Glocom for Bahrain Radio during the pandemic, transitioning it from the legacy analogue facility that was built in the '80s to the state-ofthe-art digital setup that is now on air. Eng Abdulla Ahmed Albalooshi (l), Assistant Undersecretary for Technical Affairs at the MIA, received the award from Baher Al Zaher, Managing Director for RCS MENA.
BROADCASTPRO ME INNOVATIVE PROJECT OF THE YEAR
Expo 2020 Dubai Expo 2020 bagged this award for a MAM underaking that helped facilitate the distribution and access of high-resolution videos, audio and stills on a global scale to all media. The project minimised on-premise deployment by using cloud-based services and leveraged AI technologies to optimise content indexing and cataloguing. The system could cater to 250 users at any given time, allowing them to download high-res content at the same time. Mandy Keegan (l), Vice President, Expo 2020 Dubai, and Pedro Freitas (r), Senior Manager Media Asset Management, Expo 2020, received the award from Razik Zaghlouli (c), Regional Director MENA, ATEME.
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PROAWARDS
Broadcast Awards BEST 2021 TECH IMPLEMENTATION IN OTT
Home Plus Network (H+) When Hares Consultancy conducted a study into streaming services, it discovered that an OTT app’s success depends almost entirely on the ease of content discovery. The research also showed that customers preferred a single provider to make available all the TV services they want to watch on one platform. This led Hares Consultancy to create the region’s first OTT aggregation platform – no small feat – where consumers can search and stream content and manage multiple subscriptions. Frederic Petitpont (r), co-founder and CTO of Newsbridge, presented the award to Ammar Hares, CEO and co-founder of Lovetodomedia and the company behind H+.
OUTSTANDING SPORTS INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR
IP Studios When IP Studios was entrusted with the opportunity to bring two combat sports to the UAE across multiple platforms, the Abu Dhabi entity went all out. It collaborated with international partners to bring the sport to the region, and built a whole production ecosystem and a calendar of TV events around it. It also built an app to feature live games, VOD content and training programmes for subscribers. Essentially, it helped ignite the dreams of martial arts athletes and unleashed real-life superheroes, offering them a stage to shine. For these initiatives, IP Studios stood head and shoulders above other entries. Mohamad Yehya (l), Founding Director of IP Studios, received the award from Klaus-Joerg Jasper, Senior Sales Director Middle East and CIS, Lawo. December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 33
PROAWARDS
Broadcast Awards STREAMING SERVICE OF THE YEAR
Shahid Shahid is a shining example of a product that MBC has nurtured with investment and talent, and the team has delivered a successful streaming service, with highquality content, a great user interface and a fantastic viewer experience. It produced 25 originals in 2021, versus 12 in 2020. It had 2m subscribers by the end of Ramadan 2021, versus 1.4m subscribers by Ramadan 2020. It is the first Arabic platform to bring pretheatrical films to a streaming platform. It now has a user interface in Arabic, English and French. For the first time, over 40 new Arabic titles were shown on a single platform during Ramadan. Guy Spivack (r), Regional Commercial Director MENA of Comcast Technology Solutions, presented the award to Natasha Matos-Hemingway, Group Chief Commercial Officer (VOD), MBC Group.
MENA TRENDSETTER OF THE YEAR
Cedars Art Production For the first time, this award went to a production house and is testimony to the rising significance of Arabic content and formats that are now travelling to international shores. While Turkish drama series are popular in the Arab world, for the first time an Arabic format – Al Hayba (a Cedars Art Production series), one of the region’s most successful five-season drama series – was sold to a leading production house in Turkey. The production house was also the first to distribute Arabic content on a wide scale internationally. Pictured here with the award is Sadek Sabbah, CEO of Cedars Art Production (Sabbah Brothers).
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PROAWARDS
Broadcast Awards SYSTEMS INTEGRATOR OF THE YEAR
Wave Media Solutions We had some heavyweights contending for this category, but Wave Media Solutions was chosen for bringing its systems integration expertise to Iraq. In the last 12 months, this systems integrator has completed six projects in Iraq. It integrated Iraq’s largest studio for Al Sharqiya TV in Kurdistan. From studio robotics and full studio automation to advanced VR and AR graphics to large videowalls with advanced videowall graphics, it has been responsible for some robust installations in the country. Zaid Wattar, Managing Director of Wave Media Solutions, is featured here with the award.
OUTSTANDING KIDS’ CONTENT INITIATIVE
Spacetoon Spacetoon has been involved in some remarkable work with kids. It released 30 new titles, 20 TV events and five movies targeting 6-18-yearolds in 2021. A new customised TV block targeting Arab mothers and preschoolers led to 60m views in March 2021 when it was launched. Since January 2021, subscriptions on its YouTube channel have hit 6.6m, a 2.2m increase since December 2020. The launch of The Moshaya Family Animation saw a further increase of 100K subscribers on its YouTube channel. All this led to higher acquisition and viewership in 2021. Media & Entertainment consultant Sanjay Raina (l) presented the award to Edy Saaiby, Head Of Sales – Digital & TV at SpaceToon Kids TV. December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 35
PROAWARDS
Broadcast Awards OUTSTANDING OB PROJECT OF THE YEAR
INC System Integrations DMCC – 4K IP OB van for Sharjah Broadcasting Authority This award recognised INC for successfully integrating one of the region's first IP UHD ST-2110 OB vans for Sharjah Broadcasting Authority (SBA). Equipped with eight LDX-86 4K native cameras (but wired for 12), this expandable trailer supports the production of content in 4K/UHD HDR format, as well as HD. The vehicle has since been used to cover two live events successfully. INC founder and chairman Mohammed Zaim (l) received the award from Adil Memon, VP – Content and Marketing Head at Zee Entertainment.
ENTERTAINMENT APP OF THE YEAR
Fannbox App Who wouldn’t like a celebrity to sing at their wedding or at their children’s party? The Fannbox app from Rotana Audio Visual offers users the ability to book their favourite Arabic singer or celebrity and have them perform virtually in their private events or special occasions such as weddings, engagements, graduation parties, even corporate events, while offering an engaging experience to all attendees. The app caters to the music and entertainment needs of Arab fans all over the world but is targeted primarily at users in the GCC, North Africa and the Levant region. Nesreen Hamdan Hasayen (r), Fannbox Director, received the award from Hasan Sayed Hasan, Managing Director of Master Media.
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PROAWARDS
Broadcast Awards BROADCAST EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR
Manoj A Mathew, Exec. VP & Territory Head (MENAPT), Zee Network Manoj Mathew has taken Zee to new heights since he took charge of the revenue and the creative side of the company's business in MENA. As passionate about technology as he is about content, he boldly launched new products in the market. He was part of the launch team for Zee's Arabic channels and led the network’s foray into original content production and Arabic remakes as well as co-productions of all foreign language content. Manoj (l) received the award from John Illingworth, Sales Director at Bitmovin.
CTO OF THE YEAR
Peter Riz, CTO, OSN Peter Riz made headlines when he completely reshaped OSN's streaming app, transitioning it in record time from the old app burdened by legacy coding to a brand-new platform that uses new technology to drive agility and ensure adaptability. He helped architect the new app that is designed with machine-learning capabilities to help make sharper predictions and recommendations based on customers’ preferences and viewing habits. He also placed emphasis on the app’s intuitive user interface being tailored with cutting-edge solutions through a strategic partnership with software partners. Pictured here with the award is Peter Riz. December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 37
PROAWARDS
Broadcast Awards SPECIAL RECOGNITION – UAE PRODUCTION
Al Sununu, Visioneers Holding We have seen an exceptional drama series emerge from Visioneers Holding, an Emirati-led production team in the UAE. Al Sununu was developed, produced and shot in Dubai from inception to release. The storyline is a reflection of life in Dubai, which brings together people from different cultures; it showcases the beauty of its diversity despite cultural and social differences through a compelling plot. With some big names, a slick production and an outstanding story line, Al Sununu won our hearts. Younis Alkanzy (l), Head of Production, Visioneers, received the award from Paul Wallis, Chief of Revenue B2B, The Entertainer.
SPECIAL RECOGNITION – KSA PROJECT
VITEC When the Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia was looking to bring some of its weekly horseracing coverage to an international audience via internet streaming channels, they deployed an encoder from Vitec to achieve this. This solution eliminates the need for a satellite truck, saving considerable cost. The broadcast workflow only uses the public internet and is able to power multiple streams and provide remote monitoring from anywhere in the world. The current setup can provide 4K resolution, should it be desired. Pictured with the award is Aurélie Albert (l), Marketing and Communication Manager, and Nicolas Pons, VP – Business Development, Middle East, VITEC.
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PROAWARDS
Satellite Awards SATELLITE OPERATOR OF THE YEAR
YAHSAT Yahsat hit major milestones on multiple fronts this year. In February 2021, it collaborated with a local entity to develop technologies and produce satcom products. In July, it created history by becoming the first UAE-based space entity to go public. Its mobility business secured distribution contracts worth AED 316m this year and reported a net profit of AED 159m for the first nine months of 2021. The top line brought in revenue of AED 1bn, demonstrating a strong performance since Q1 2021. It also serves as an incubator of homegrown engineering talent through its Space Programme. Yahsat CTO Adnan Al Muhairi (l) received the award from Amanda Turnbull.
SATELLITE SOLUTIONS PROVIDER OF THE YEAR
ST Engineering iDirect ST Engineering iDirect teamed up with Broadpeak, EasyBroadcast and EKT to demonstrate the first end-to-end B2C use case of native IP, showcasing origination, transport, reception and consumption of live OTT video over satellite. Broadpeak’s solutions packaged the transcoded streams into OTT formats, ST Engineering iDirect integrated its SCPC or VSAT solution for the modulation and multicast transmission of the content over satellite, EKT's STB partner delivered the content to TV or mobile, and EasyBroadcast showed its 'edge' solution. Heba Korayem (r) of H.Consult presented the award to Tajani Bouqentar, GM MEA, ST Engineering iDirect. PRO December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 39
PROROUNDTABLE
THE ROADMAP TO DIGITAL INNOVATION In Dubai’s Kempinski Hotel, the Grass Valley Middle East Tech Summit tackled some of the most challenging aspects of digital transformation, bringing together front-line decision-makers
The answers to the perennial question ‘Should there be a full-on migration to cloud?’ are becoming more complex and pressing. The GVx Middle East Tech Summit, titled Digital Transformation in Action, assessed the practical and commercial implications of the debate, bringing together key industry decisionmakers well-versed in understanding the challenges and opportunities of full digital transition. Well-known for its end-to-end ecosystem of reliable, open standards-based solutions, Grass Valley joined forces with BroadcastPro to deliver an important closeddoor discussion that focused on a highly practical agenda and assessed the most viable roadmaps for change.
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New branding, new capabilities Setting the scene for the debate, kick-start presentations from Louis Hernandez, Jr – founder, CEO and Managing Director of Black Dragon Capital – as well as the owner of Grass Valley and other top management, focused on the key criteria attracting Grass Valley to the Middle East market, as well as showcasing the company’s new branding. For Grass Valley, the region’s appeal is best summed up by the continuing positive outlook for growth, with worldclass events such as Expo 2020 Dubai and the 2022 World Cup setting global enterprise benchmarks. Other factors include how the regional industry is pre-eminently in a state of transition, with new production complex and expensive,
PROROUNDTABLE
the rising costs of media rights, an explosion of distribution platforms and the marked rise of OTT services. During this period of transition, Grass Valley says it is positioned to support media companies’ business transformation; efficiently create and distribute specialty content; unify linear, streaming and social workflows; eliminate the risk of new revenue models; and – critically – increase operating efficiencies. Tim Banks, Vice President of Sales for EMEA, made special reference to Grass Valley’s recent wins in the region, including Abu Dhabi Media’s investment in GV cameras, switchers, replay and IP infrastructure for Expo 2020. Other upcoming projects include Al Jazeera’s GV deployment for Studio 5, the first AMPP MSP (Managed Service Provider) agreement with AVC delivering remote production for regional sports events, and the 2022 World Cup’s adoption of GV cameras and switchers, as well as other big wins including Asharq in Saudi Arabia, participation in the Arab Cup in Qatar and the IBC Accelerator Projects (5G and AMPP) along with beIN, Ooredoo and Al Jazeera. This was followed by two interesting case studies – one from Gordon Castle, SVP Technology and Operations EMEA Eurosport/ Discovery at Discovery Inc, who spoke about the use of cloud and IP technologies for their coverage of the Tokyo Olympics, and the other from Peter Van Dam, CEO and founder, AV Consulting, who spoke about partnering with Grass Valley to enable cloud-based remote sports production for leading clients in the Middle East. Expert voices Grass Valley also hosted a panel session moderated by Vijaya Cherian, Editor of BroadcastPro ME, published by CPI Trade Media. She presented the participants with three
Louis Hernandez, Jr, founder, CEO and Managing Director of Black Dragon Capital (BDC).
key questions, reflecting how cloud and IP solutions are frequently best suited for fast-tracking performance in a multiscreen culture, while also recognising the potential hurdles and watersheds.
It doesn’t mean the end of broadcasting as we’ve known it; we’re simply choosing the parts of the AI mix that are of most use. We’re asking which aspects will empower performance across key areas and give us the best returns” Peter Van Dam, CEO and founder, AV Consulting
• What’s the best path to navigate towards a full digital transformation? • Should media companies migrate to cloud, IP or both? • Should media companies adopt private, public or hybrid cloud deployments? In response to the first question, Hasan Sayed Hasan, Managing Director, Master Media, commented: “While many issues come to mind, we fundamentally have to ask: why are we doing it? What’s the benefit of that full digital transformation to the organisation? “Once we can answer that question, the next aspect is leadership. The leadership must be prepared to explain the benefits of the transformation to the whole organisation. Everyone must understand it, and that means departments like Accounts, HR and Distribution, as well as Production. Without everyone onboard, the process simply won’t work. “Training is also crucial here. It’s the key to empowering people across every different level in the business. My experience shows that typically there will be some junior people who will be antagonists, and they will be
Peter Van Dam shares a case study from Saudi Arabia with attendees.
December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 41
PROROUNDTABLE
against the transformation, but if you can genuinely explain the reasons behind the changes, they can be brought onboard. So this is really all about ensuring good communication between silos, job descriptions and grades. Everyone has to know what the organisation is doing and why it’s doing it, because – and it’s vital to remember this – every change is also a cultural change. For it to work, to change the culture, everybody has to be aware of what’s happening and buy into that change.” Apart from the efforts required to change, digital transformation offers certain benefits over traditional analogue approaches. These include increased working flexibility and more transparent costs and margins. Peter Van Dam, CEO and founder, AV Consulting, explained: “I can now give an exact figure for what my projects tomorrow will cost me and tell you exactly what my overheads will be. Of course, this has great advantages for costing the service end-to-end and therefore gives me a better commercial edge. Also, I now have much greater freedom about where I choose to work. I’m no longer bound by any of the old constraints, and nor are the teams
Louis Hernandez, Jr kickstarted the discussion with a brief introduction about BDC's interest in Grass Valley.
I need to work and collaborate with. “Of course, it’s important to add that many of the old ways of working will continue for years. It doesn’t mean the
“So many new solutions are now arriving after quite a few years of development, and we should all recognise that the cloud has already happened. It’s not on its way, it’s already here!” Miljenko Logozar, co-founder and CEO, StoryDeck.io
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end of broadcasting as we’ve known it; we’re simply choosing the parts of the AI mix that are of most use. We’re asking which aspects will empower performance across key areas and give us the best returns.” Migrating: Where to and how? Is it best to migrate to cloud, IP or both? Ruba Ibrahim, Director of Operations, Al Arabiya, believes that “while we might want to involve everyone in the decisionmaking process, there’s no doubt that democracy can make things very slow. Sometimes it really hinders the process. Convincing people is very time-consuming; everyone who’s been through the process knows that.” “However, it’s also true that to be effective, the transformation has to be a full 360. If it is, and the word gets to all the teams and all the decision-makers, you can get some good surprises. For example, we thought it would be the younger staff who’d be most interested, but it’s often people in their 50s and 60s who’ve really led with this. They didn’t want to be left behind by the younger members of staff and were determined to challenge them, showing how good they can be when they combine all their experience with the new technology as well. “Of course, there have always been the operational challenges,
PROROUNDTABLE
such as the cost and the availability of the right bandwidths. So you need to ask if making the transition is really worth the cost. Plus, there’s also the human aspect to consider. Some people are afraid that digital transformation will cost them their jobs, but in fact this often isn’t the case. In reality, you just need people to be more creative and inventive, and it’s actually more of a challenge to find a very skilled human resources pool.” Contributing virtually to the debate, Ibrahim Nassar, Manager of Broadcast Engineering, Al Jazeera, seconded this but added that the strategic angle is as important as the cultural angle. “I think we need a mix of approaches – there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. I think it will be a long time before we are always in the cloud, and we have to understand what works best for every skillset and department. For example, we need to understand
all, there are a lot of factors to consider, so it’s critical that any business starts its transformational plan well in advance and plans practically, with a good lead time.”
the needs of editorial, and in fact the needs of all our key stakeholders. “The challenge is not in the technology, it’s in the cultural change that the transition implies, and that needs to be driven from above. This isn’t an overnight process, because in order to start the transformation, you need the full support of the people on the ground. That’s not to mention the cost – after all, even moving to IP is not always a cheap solution. All in
Public, private or hybrid cloud? What about the third question? As to whether companies should opt for private, public or hybrid cloud deployments, Miljenko Logozar, co-founder and CEO, StoryDeck.io, argued: “It’s really time that things like post-production and playout were moved to the cloud. So many new solutions are now arriving after quite a few years of development, and we should all recognise that the cloud has already happened. It’s not on its way, it’s already here! “The fact is, we’ve all been busy doing our own things, and we didn’t notice what’s been happening in areas like content development. In the time that it took for many of us to discuss what to do next, many
Above, Miljenko Logozar and Ibrahim Nassar join the discussion virtually from Qatar; below, Tim Banks, VP of Sales for EMEA, GV, addresses the gathering.
December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 43
PROROUNDTABLE
startups have already acquired half a billion users. All of these things have already happened, and if we don’t accept them here in broadcast, well, the internet definitely can.” For Israel Esteban, Chief Technology Officer at beIN Media Group, “It all depends on timing and your situation – in other words, it depends on your needs at that moment. You can only really make the transition when it makes sense to do so. For instance, for two to three years we were not in the cloud, but at that time I didn’t feel we were missing anything. There simply isn’t a right or wrong answer, only what’s right or wrong for you.” Apart from cost and the impact on organisational culture, Nabil El Madbek, Technology Projects
“Digital transformation is full of surprises. We thought it would be the younger staff who’d be most interested, but it’s people in their 50s and 60s who’ve really led with this” Ruba Ibrahim, Director of Operations, Al Arabiya Manager, Abu Dhabi Media, remarked that it’s “all about the workflows, and this can be a big challenge. We have to accept that sometimes we need a very specific focus, because one of the most practical and effective ways we can use this technology is by introducing new
ways of handling production. If we ignore that, we are neglecting one of the principal benefits that the new technology can bring.” Future thinking It was clear from the panel session that as cloud adoption gathers pace, the debate around the role of AI and digital transformation is increasingly relevant. Grass Valley’s role is evolving as a leading presence driving the industry’s realignment and commitment to digital transition. This was well emphasised by Sydney Lovely, Chief Technology Officer, Grass Valley, who described the Grass Valley Media Universe as “a connected ecosystem for elastic media production and distribution”. PRO
Left: Ruba Ibrahim from Al Arabiya; right, Jan Lange, Grass Valley's Chief Revenue Officer, with MENA attendees.
Mohammad Saifi and Jean Claude Rahme from Abu Dhabi Media on the left, and Hasan Sayed Hasan from Master Media and Peter Van Dam from AV Consulting on the right.
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PROGUEST
“It goes without saying that the pandemic has played a major role in accelerating the efforts of all sorts of companies towards digitisation”
Changing production needs in the MENA market The timely launch of the New Media Academy by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum last year represents not only the sort of ingenious forward thinking that defines the leadership of the UAE, but also reflects the exciting new trends that we have been observing in the market as a leading supplier in the MENA region. We have witnessed a departure from traditional modes of production, broadcast and marketing in recent years, especially in non-production companies and streaming platforms, who despite their many differences are affected by this new era of content creation. Content creation has revolutionised and revitalised marketing across all companies, regardless of field or background. On one side, we see the sort of digital content that is being specifically created and curated by companies for said companies on social media platforms, and on the other end of the spectrum we see traditional broadcasting stations adapting to these changes by moving their services online and mass producing content that appeals to the traditional TV viewer. This is where we see tremendous change in our customer portfolio. Where we once used to supply to a niche group of customers, meaning traditional production houses that provided a variety of services to regular companies, now we have a wide range of new customers from companies such as Spinneys, Sephora, DAMAC and even Emirates Bank and
BMW. Not long ago, these companies became aware of the importance and necessity of social media platforms as a marketing tool. Originally, they began relying on third-party specialised media companies to strategise and oversee their digital networks. However, especially in the past two years, it has recently become clear that they need to establish in-house media departments that can handle their marketing needs. These companies are now investing in multifunctional, cost-effective products that can generate both photo and video at the same time. It is truly an exciting and defining moment in our lives as suppliers and trainers. Our most sellable and attractive products – camera, light, sound, tripods and all related accessories – are the ones that can serve multipurpose for marketing. Naturally, we have shifted our focus to supplying products and providing the necessary training that can secure these services for our growing clients. Meanwhile, the increasing reliance of these companies on in-house marketing means that traditional broadcasting stations are losing advertisements. If companies are able to use their digital social media platforms to advertise their products in a manner that best suits them without having to pay a fee to broadcasting stations, then of course there is no doubt that they would opt for the former. Not only have broadcasting stations been losing advertisements but they have also been losing their
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audience, as traditional TV viewership has been continuously declining and increasingly moving online. This is where we start to lose traditional broadcasters such as Dubai TV and Abu Dhabi TV as regular clients. However, the great news is that as the proliferation of streaming platforms and OTTs flock people back to their televisions again, broadcasting stations are presented with an exciting new opportunity to adapt and reform by producing content that guarantees loyalty and viewership. For instance, ADtv, Abu Dhabi Media’s video-ondemand platform, has gained a solid reputation and a dedicated growing audience in the region. The same can be said about MBC Shahid, which has established itself as the leading Arabic streaming service. This shift in viewership habits has of course reignited the energy and potential of production houses to create engaging content that capitalises on this momentum to maintain and grow their audiences. This means revitalising the traditional drama soaps or creating new competition programmes that have thankfully brought the industry back. This is the future, and this is where everyone is investing their focus and energy. It goes without saying that the pandemic has played a major role in accelerating the efforts of all sorts of companies towards digitisation, but that is certainly a topic we can discuss separately. Alaa Al Rantisi is Managing Director of Advanced Media.
ISSUE 136 | DECEMBER 2021
Licensed by Dubai Development Authority
CELEBRATING Honouring the innovators and changemakers in MENA Media and Entertainment at the 2021 ASBU BroadcastPro Awards
PROINTRO
GROUP Managing Director Raz Islam raz.islam@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 375 5471 Managing Partner Vijaya Cherian vijaya.cherian@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 375 5472 Director of Finance & Business Operations Shiyas Kareem shiyas.kareem@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 375 5474 EDITORIAL Editor Vijaya Cherian vijaya.cherian@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 55 105 3787 Assistant Editor Urooj Fatima Sub Editor Aelred Doyle ADVERTISING Group Sales Director Sandip Virk sandip.virk@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 50 929 1845 +44 (0) 7516 993 862 DESIGN Art Director Simon Cobon Designer Percival Manalaysay MARKETING & EVENTS Events Producer Paul Godfrey paul.godfrey@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 375 5470 Social Media & Marketing Executive Gladys DSouza gladys.dsouza@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 375 5478 Events Executive Minara Salakhi minara.s@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 433 2856 CIRCULATION & PRODUCTION Production Manager Vipin V. Vijay vipin.vijay@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0)4 375 5713 Data & Distribution Manager Phinson Mathew George phinson.george@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0)4 375 5476 DIGITAL SERVICES Abdul Baeis Sadiq Siddiqui
Welcome Content seemed to dominate the conversation at the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit, and it’s certainly the content players that walked away with most of the prizes at the awards gala we hosted on November 16 at Westin Mina Seyahi. We have heard it said that since 2020, half a billion dollars has been spent on developing Arabic originals just for streaming platforms. Investments in high-value Arabic productions have gone up steadily over the last few years and aggressive investments from MBC and OSN in that space have perhaps inspired more production houses to start catering to that demand. The rise of small media houses that take these Arabic productions to international shores and make them available in partnership with major cable or telco operators in those countries has further fed this appetite. Lebanese production house Cedars Art Production also landed a major coup in October with the sale of the format of Al Hayba – one of its productions – to a leading Turkish production house. As someone who has been part of the BroadcastPro jury for the
last eleven years, I have witnessed an evolution in the quality of the productions from a tech and story point of view. Gone are the patchy abstract stories; today we have wellrounded, sophisticated productions that hold their own against any international production. This is indeed a proud moment for the Arab world, and we had the joy of celebrating some of those truly compelling stories at the ASBU BroadcastPro Awards. As the UAE celebrates its 50th anniversary, it’s also a truly proud moment for the country as high-quality productions helmed by Emirati teams are now making headlines. Al Sununu from Visioneers is a good example, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. BroadcastPro also celebrated several other players who are continuously innovating in terms of both technology and strategy. This issue is an opportunity to relive some of those glorious moments from last month.
Vijaya Cherian, Editorial Director
FOUNDER Dominic De Sousa (1959-2015) Published by
The publisher of this magazine has made every effort to ensure the content is accurate on the date of publication. The opinions and views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the publisher and editor. The published material, adverts, editorials and all other content are published in good faith. No part of this publication or any part of the contents thereof may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the permission of the publisher in writing. Publication licensed by Dubai Development Authority to CPI Trade Publishing FZ LLC. Printed by Printwell Printing Press LLC.
ISSUE 136 | DECEMBER 2021
Licensed by Dubai Development Authority
On this month's cover…
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CELEBRATING Honouring the innovators and changemakers in MENA Media and Entertainment at the 2021 ASBU BroadcastPro Awards
The winners of the 2021 ASBU BroadcastPro Awards
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December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 3
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PROCONTENTS
Inside this issue 07 NEWS Gravity Media and Belden provide broadcast solutions for four Qatar stadiums; IBC cancels in-person event in Amsterdam; TVU Networks ties with DMI to provide video footage during Expo 2020; Shahid launches new user interface in French; Progressive Generation Studios launches OTT service for kids in MENA; and more
December 2021 QATAR STADIUMS CHOOSE GRAVITY MEDIA
CAN SUPPORT BROADCAST MENA professionals in broadcast discussed the impact of AI technologies on various aspects of newsgathering, production, contribution and distribution at the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit in Dubai last month
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07
16 EXPLORING HOW AI TECH
KSA GEARS UP FOR FILM FESTIVAL
TECH LEADERS EXPLORE THE POWER OF AI IN BROADCAST AND STREAMING
16 OTT CHIEFS ON HOW TO TAKE STREAMING TO THE NEXT LEVEL
22 CRACKING THE
OTT STRATEGY As more streamers enter the market and consumers subscribe to multiple services, the OTT panel explored the means to crack navigation and how to ensure subscribers stick around
22 THE CHAMPIONS OF THE 2021 ASBU BROADCASTPRO AWARDS
28 WINNERS OF 2021 ASBU BROADCASTPRO AWARDS A closer look at those who bagged the awards this year
40 GV X ME TECH SUMMIT Grass Valley's top management came together with MENA leaders to discuss industry challenges, regional needs and the path to IP and cloud
28 MENA INDUSTRY EXECUTIVES DISCUSS IP AND CLOUD WITH GRASS VALLEY
46 GUEST COLUMN Alaa Al Rantisi explores how demand has cropped up in new sectors for production equipment in recent times
40 December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com |
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PRONEWS
Gravity Media and Belden provide broadcast solutions for Qatar stadiums Belden Inc and Gravity Media have announced their involvement in four major stadiums hosting the 2022 World Cup. In 2010, it was announced that Qatar would host it, and Gravity Media and Belden were then awarded the projects to deliver broadcast systems for the four stadiums. Since then, Qatar has been a hive of activity as it equips the host stadiums with the latest broadcast technology. The one-year countdown to the opening of the world’s biggest football tournament kicked off on November 21. Gravity Media partnered with its long-term supplier Belden to design, supply, install, test and commission
The Ahmed bin Ali stadium in Qatar.
the broadcast cabling systems for the opening match venue Al Bayt Stadium, Al Thumama Stadium, Khalifa International Stadium and Ahmed bin Ali Stadium. Gravity Media shaped the project design using input from local broadcasters and its expertise with high-profile international federations.
Eamonn Dowdall, Executive Director for Gravity Media, said: “It was an honour to be involved in such prestigious projects. With the combined expertise of Belden and Gravity Media, the solutions provided will support the stadiums’ needs well into the future.” The installations required
Belden’s broadcast solutions, including SMPTE, Triax, Video, Multi-Core Audio and single-mode fibre cable, enabling host broadcasters to connect their facilities to 50+ camera positions in each of the stadiums, which include interviews, arrivals and other off-field activities. This will enable broadcasters to transmit content to billions of fans around the world while simultaneously future-proofing the stadiums’ systems for long-term, sustainable use. Four matches will be played each day during the group stage. The tournament will last 28 days and culminate on December 18, 2022, the National Day of Qatar.
IBC cancels in-person event in Amsterdam
TVU Networks ties with DMI to provide video footage during Expo 2020
IBC has announced that its in-person event due to take place on December 3-6 in Amsterdam has been cancelled. The move follows growing concerns about the Covid-19 situation in the Netherlands, which has deteriorated in recent weeks, and feedback from the IBC exhibitor and visitor community. The IBC Partnership Board made the decision to prevent exhibitors and visitors from travelling. In a mail to exhibitors, Steve Connolly, Sales Director at IBC, said: “IBC 2021 will now take place on IBC Digital and will include its AI-based exhibitor platform that allows exhibitors to show their latest products and innovations, plus a comprehensive content programme and the opportunity to meet and connect with the industry.”
TVU Networks has partnered with Dubai Media Incorporated (DMI) to provide exclusive footage from the six-monthlong global festival, Expo Dubai 2020, which began on October 1. In conjunction with DMI, it is sourcing video footage from the region to anyone around the world interested in seeing the event. Two live video sources from Dubai TV are being offered to TVU MediaSource and TVU Grid customers, as well as TVU Search subscribers free of charge. TVU Networks is offering its TVU One 4K HDR 5G mobile transmitters to visitors
for rent or purchase, as well as solutions within its cloud-based video production ecosystem: TVU Partyline, TVU Producer, TVU Server and TVU Grid. Paul Shen, CEO of TVU Networks, said: “This is an incredible opportunity for TVU. This is a high-profile cultural event that showcases a country’s most compelling developments. We’re proud to stand alongside such known innovators. Live feeds enabled by our cloud-based solutions are helping broadcasters bring the excitement of this exhibition to their viewers and the world.”
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PRONEWS
Shahid announces new user interface in French Streaming platform Shahid from MBC Group will now have a French interface in addition to Arabic and English. Aimed at users from territories including North Africa, Europe, Canada and the Levant, the brand-new French interface comes with a host of features similar to those available in Arabic and English. Not only will Shahid and Shahid VIP subscribers be able to navigate the service
in French, but they will also be able to access their favourite new programmes subtitled in their preferred language. Shahid is also adding new French and North African series and other shows over the coming months. New releases – either in French or subtitled in French – include French drama Stalk, AlgerianSyrian drama series Ward Aswad and French thriller series Inside.
OSN to stream Turkish series exclusively on app OSN will bring Turkish dramas across a wide range of genres, including crime thrillers, romance and action, exclusively to its streaming app. Darine ElKhatib, Senior VP of Arabic Services & Original Production at
OSN, said: “The Turkish TV genre has delivered some of the Middle East’s most compelling shows, capturing the hearts and minds of viewers throughout the region. The rich storylines, depth of characters,
Thalath Qurush is one of the new additions to OSN's raft of Turkish content.
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edgy plot twists and brilliant production leave audiences emotionally hooked and wholly connected to their favorite series. At OSN, this is what we call premium content; we understand the audience’s anticipation to watch the latest episode the minute it’s released. We are committed to bringing premium entertainment to the region that resonates with their needs.” New Turkish additions include Thalath Qurush (Three Pennies Üç Kuruş), Al Qada’a (Yargı), Al-Tufah-Al Haram (Yasak Elma – The Forbidden Fruit), Ikhwati (Kardeşlerim) and Fatat Al Nafitha (Camdaki Kiz).
Signiant acquires Levels Beyond The acquisition will see Levels Beyond’s talent and technology used to extend the functionality of Signiant’s SaaS platform, adding new capabilities for simplifying and modernising media workflows. Commenting on the company’s second acquisition of 2021, Signiant CEO Margaret Craig said: “By virtue of our underlying acceleration technology and broad-based role in the global flow of media, Signiant can provide customers with a foundation that addresses multiple supply chain challenges efficiently and at scale. Our SaaS platform has critical mass, it serves as the core of the B2B media ecosystem, and it is the ideal anchor point for adjacent mediacentric functionality.” The company recently acquired Lesspain Software to facilitate organising, finding and interacting with media assets, and the Levels Beyond acquisition extends Signiant’s offerings to include a range of configurable workflow building blocks. Signiant Chief Solutions Officer Mike Flathers added: “By leveraging Levels Beyond's knowhow and the Signiant SaaS platform, we can give customers a much lighterweight, more productised approach to workflow implementation.”
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PRONEWS
MBC Group signs deal with COFE App MBC Group has partnered with COFE App, an online coffee-centric marketplace which currently serves across the UAE, KSA and Kuwait. The partnership will see the broadcast network support the digital app in achieving its growth strategy through MBC’s channels, digital platforms and events. While the network will play a crucial role in adding scale and visibility to COFE’s growth trajectory, this deal will also give MBC investment priority in COFE App’s future funding rounds. COFE’s collaboration with MBC Group is the first of a series of key
Saudi authority approves NEOM AAA video game project Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Competition (GAC) has approved a project to implement, manage, operate and develop a video game studio in NEOM. The JV between NEOM and MBC Initiatives will be the first AAA video gaming project in the Middle East. The Authority gave approval to the economic concentration process between the two entities following a study of the Kingdom’s video game market and the issues concerning competition in the sector.
COFE App CEO Ali Al Ebrahim (l) and Fadel Zahreddine, Group Director of Emerging Media at MBC Group.
partnerships that support the startup to establish an even stronger footing in the beverage tech arena. Commenting on this milestone in COFE App’s growth journey, Founder and CEO Ali Al Ebrahim said: “This partnership marks a
pivotal milestone for the COFE brand. We believe we can become a market leader in the beverage technology space across the region and beyond, and can only reach our goal with the support of the vast network of channels and
Lebanese TV station Al Manar chooses Etere ETX for upgrade Al Manar will upgrade its existing Imagine playout system with Etere’s channel-in-abox software. After a series of demonstrations and evaluations, Al Manar decided to replace its existing playout facilities with Etere ETX. Al Manar continues to leverage Etere technologies to maximise efficiencies and monetisation opportunities. Etere ETX integrates all the playout features
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needed to bring a channel on-air, including ingest, 4K playout, closed caption/ subtitling insertions, dynamic overlays, text over recorded/live videos, and NDI, IP and SDI inputs/ outputs in a single piece of software. Etere ETX will also replace the already outdated Imagine Nexio video servers.
partners of the MBC brand.” The partnership with COFE App is part of MBC’s plan to actively explore new media and emerging types of content, services and events to aid regional businesses in offering innovative and up-to-date products and services for customers. Fadel Zahreddine, Group Director of Emerging Media at MBC Group, said: “MBC believes that innovation in responding to consumer behaviour is the essence of entrepreneurial digital solutions. MBC is committed to supporting and elevating regional entrepreneurs through visibility.”
Saudi Film Commission picks The Tambour of Retribution as Oscars candidate Saudi Film Commission has chosen the feature film The Tambour of Retribution (Had Al Tar) to represent the Kingdom in the Best International Film category at the Oscars. Films competing for the award will pass through several screening stages before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences chooses the final list. The winner will be announced at the 94th Oscars that will be held at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles on March 27.
PRONEWS
Progressive Generation Studios in Jordan launches OTT service for kids Jordan-based Progressive Generation Studios will launch a new streaming service called PG Kids for children in the Middle East and North Africa on January 1, 2022. At the time of launch, the subscriptionbased streaming service will have more than 100,000 minutes of original content in Arabic and English. After having distributed original content through linear broadcasters and other third parties since 2006, Progressive Generation Studios decided to gather all its original content in one place and
offer it directly to audiences across the MENA region. “We want to create one of the world’s biggest streaming services for children’s content in both Arabic and English, providing a safe online space for edutainment. Working together with Red Bee, this is now becoming a reality,” commented Ahmad Al Masri, CEO, Progressive Generations Studios. “With more than 15 years of experience, and over 100,000 minutes of original content in our portfolio, we are ready to introduce PG Kids to the world. Red Bee helped
us set up a subscriptionbased ser-vice quickly, with broadcast-quality streams and precise personalisation and recommendation functionality.” PG Kids will be available at less than USD 5 per subscription. All content is protected through Red Bee’s advanced geo blocking and digital rights management (DRM) functionality. As an add-on, Progressive Generation Studios also offers merchandise related to their original content through PG-merch.com. “We’re happy that
Progressive Generation Studios chose Red Bee as its OTT partner for PG Kids and we look forward to seeing the service grow and evolve,” commented Houssam al Khaled, Head of Sales and Operations, Market Area Middle East, Red Bee. “Direct-to-consumer streaming is absolutely booming at the moment and with support from our OTT Services content owners and creators all over the world are transforming their business model, reaching larger audiences and monetising their assets in new ways.”
Netflix to celebrate Arab cinema with launch of award-winning collection Netflix will launch a new collection of Arab films titled Celebrating Arab Cinema on December 9. The collection will include 58 films that have been recognised at various prestigious global awards ceremonies and film festivals. The collection includes films from renowned filmmakers such as Nadine Labaki, Annemarie Jacir, Elia Suleiman, Hany AbuAssad and Ziad Doueiri, as well as many recognisable titles such as The Present, Lift Like a Girl and White Helmets. It builds on the previously released Prestige collection 2020, celebrating outstanding talent from different parts of the Arab
world and their iconic stories. Nuha El Tayeb, Director of Content Acquisitions, Turkey and MENA at Netflix said: "Each year, the entertainment community and cinephiles around the world turn their attention to global award ceremonies such as the Academy Awards, the BAFTAs, Cannes,
Venice and more. All eyes are on the films, no matter where they’re from and what they’re about, welcoming authentic storytelling from all parts of the world. "We pride ourselves on giving people the opportunity to experience the content they may not have had a chance to see.
"The collection isn’t just fictional stories but also includes powerful documentaries, such as the exploration of first responders in war-torn Syria in White Helmets, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject. The Celebrating Arab Cinema collection brings together the best from the Arab world. "Many of these movies were also selected to represent their country in the Academy Award submissions for Best International Feature Film, spanning different parts of the Arab world covering Egyptian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Jordanian and Iraqi stories."
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PRONEWS
MBC Studios, JB Pictures and AGC Studios team up for Desert Warrior MBC Studios, the production arm of MBC Group, has partnered with US studio JB Pictures and AGC Studios to produce Desert Warrior, an action-thriller feature film set in seventh-century Arabia. MBC Studios’ biggest production to date, it is also the first tentpole film to be shot at NEOM in KSA, a new milestone for MBC Group. It is supported by the NEOM Media Industries Sector, with major productions a catalyst for the development of the regional media industries epicentre at Neom. The international title – which has just commenced filming in Neom and Tabuk
Desert Warrior, featuring Anthony Mackie and Aiysha Hart, will be the first tentpole film to be shot at NEOM in KSA.
– features Anthony Mackie (Avengers: Endgame, The Banker) and Aiysha Hart (Mogul Mowgli, Colette). JB Pictures’ Bolt commented: “Desert Warrior will give audiences a ringside seat to one of the most
dramatic and consequential battles in history. Spectacular action and great bravery set against stunning mountainous desert landscapes.” Wayne Borg, Managing Director, Media Industries at NEOM, stated: “Attracting
Media Mania chooses Ross Video solution for OB van
Roland Daou (c) of Media Mania, flanked by Benoit Rousseil (l), Regional Sales Director SEUR, and Deepraj Sandhar (r), Regional Manager of Ross Video.
UAE production company Media Mania has selected Ross Video’s Hyperconverged production platform for its new state-of-the-art 12G 4K UHD OB van. After spending more than 12 months reviewing broadcast industry vendors
and the various solutions they offer, Media Mania decided to invest in Ross Video’s latest Ultrix Acuity Hyperconverged production platform, a new production solution that combines the company’s flagship Acuity production switcher with the software-defined Ultrix
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routing/AV processing product. This solution will form the backbone of a new OB truck that will be used to create international sports productions throughout the Gulf region and beyond. Roland Daou, CEO of Media Mania, said: “After many months of assessing the broadcast industry, it was clear that Ross Video’s local team in the region and the innovative softwaredefined technology met our technical and operational requirements. We are delighted to put our third OB van on the road to start producing exciting and innovative productions all over the Middle East.”
a production of the scale of Desert Warrior as our first feature film highlights the confidence the film industry has in our ability to deliver a seamless production experience. Our fresh and diverse locations, worldclass production team and attractive incentives make NEOM a very appealing destination for screen production.” Filming for Desert Warrior commenced on September 12 and is expected to continue until the end of this year. AGC International, the international sales and distribution arm of AGC Studios, will handle worldwide sales.
Palestinian film Amira wins in Rome Palestinian film Amira, directed by Egyptian director Mohamed Diab, received an Amnesty International human rights award and a special mention from a jury that included university students from Rome at the 27th MedFilm Festival in Rome. Amira is Diab’s third film as a director, after 678 (2010) and his 2016 hit Clash (Eshtebak). The film is a co-production between Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and was shot entirely in Jordan.
PROFESTIVAL
Saudi Arabia gears up for Red Sea International Film Festival The inaugural lineup Saudi Arabia’s first large-scale film festival, in partnership with Vox Cinemas, MBC Group and Saudia Airlines, has announced the programme for its inaugural edition, which will run 6-15 December in Jeddah. The Red Sea International Film Festival will feature 138 feature films and shorts from 67 countries in 34 languages from both established and emerging talent, and will host 25 world premieres, 48 Arab premieres and 17 GCC premieres, with a number of filmmakers and actors in attendance for many of the films. Cyrano, a musical romantic drama directed by award-winning British director Joe Wright and written by Erica Schmidt, based on her 2018 stage musical, will raise the curtain. The festival will close with the world premiere of acclaimed Egyptian director Amr Salama’s Bara El Manhag. A slate of 27 new films from Saudi filmmakers will be shown alongside the best of new international cinema. The lineup of features and shorts will open a window for international guests to explore all aspects of Saudi society, and provide a vital platform
Whisper Down the Lane, directed by Raghad Albarqi, will be part of the Saudi shorts lineup.
A still from Quareer by Ragheed Al Nahdi, which will be screened as part of the New Saudi Cinema section.
for Saudi filmmakers to present their work on the big screen to the global film industry and local audiences. Alongside the Red Sea Competition, red carpet galas and special presentations, the festival will host a range of cinema in the following sections: Festival Favourites, New Saudi/New Cinema, Red Sea Treasures, Red Sea Arab and International Spectacular, Red Sea Next Generation, Red Sea Immersive and Red Sea Episodic. The Arab and international competition will showcase the highest creative achievements from an array of filmmakers in its Red Sea Feature and Shorts Competition sections. The lineup of 18 shorts and 16 features showcases compelling works produced in the past year. Winners in each competition will be selected by juries and announced on December 13. The festival will also celebrate women in film, with two very special talents honoured – Saudi filmmaker Haifaa AlMansour and Egyptian actress Laila Eloui. The Red Sea Souk, the Festival’s industry market, will consist of the Project Market, with pitching and meetings for a selection of 23 films in development, and Works-in-Progress Screenings, rough cuts of a selection of films in post-production. More than $800,000 will be awarded to the projects selected in the Red Sea Souk Awards.
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The Red Sea Souk will also welcome a series of key players to lead discussions on a range of topics including the global content boom and demand for content creators, the post-pandemic industry and sustainable media production. It will also showcase over 20 local and regional exhibiting companies including buyers, sales agents, film commissions, distributors and exhibitors. Immediately following the Souk on December 12-13, the festival will hold Talent Days, a two-day initiative designed to support the development of the next generation of Saudi filmmakers.
Red Sea Immersive explores VR world Red Sea Immersive, the programming strand of the Red Sea International Film Festival, has announced a 21-strong programme of virtual reality experiences, and will run December 7-15 at Jeddah’s new creative complex, Hayy Jameel. It will introduce immersive storytelling experiences to audiences in Jeddah, while also serving as an inspiration and catalyst to future immersive content creators and studios from the region. Thirteen of the most significant VR works produced in 2021 will be
PROFESTIVAL
The International Spectacular section
The Good Boss, written and directed by Fernando León de Aranoa, is part of the International Spectacular.
presented in competition for the Golden Yusr Immersive Award, which will include a cash prize of $10,000 with eight projects presented out of competition. The programme is curated by Liz Rosenthal, curator of Venice VR at the Venice International Film Festival. Red Sea Immersive will be adjudicated by an all-female jury of three leading international artists. The jury will be presided over by American avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson, joined by BAFTAwinning director Victoria Mapplebeck and one of the first Saudi Arabian street artists, Sarah Mohanna Al Abdali. The 13 immersive storytelling experiences being presented in the competition are Anandala, End of Night, Genesis, Glimpse, Goliath: Playing with Reality, Kusunda, Laika, Lavrynthos, Le Bal de Paris de Blanca Li, Marco & Polo Go Round, Reeducated, Samsara (Lun Hui) and The Sick Rose. The inaugural Red Sea International Film Festival will take place in Jeddah December 6-15.
This is a curated collection of some of the year’s most powerful stories from iconic, award-winning international filmmaking voices. All eight films will be Arab premieres, showcasing the best of international cinema to the Arab world. Edouard Waintrop, Artistic Director of RedSeaIFF, said: “The stories told in these films, over half of which are from female filmmakers, portray a vibrant and diverse array of views and we are thrilled to be able to showcase them all at the Festival.” The lineup consists of Giuseppe Tornatore’s Ennio; Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour; French-Algerian director Yamina Benguigui’s latest film Sisters; Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut The Lost Daughter; Belfast, written and directed by Academy Award nominee Kenneth Branagh; Spanish comedy The Good Boss, written and directed by Fernando León de Aranoa; You Resemble Me, the directorial debut of EgyptianAmerican filmmaker and award-winning journalist Dina Amer; and The Colour Room, directed by Claire McCarthy.
The New Saudi Cinema section The world premieres of selected films from talented up-and-coming Saudis will be among the 27 films presented at the inaugural festival. Each screening
You Resemble Me is the directorial debut of Egyptian-American filmmaker and award-winning journalist Dina Amer.
will be accompanied by a Q&A from the filmmakers or cast, aiming at showcasing and celebrating emerging Saudi talent. Mohyee Qari, Programme Manager at RedSeaIFF, said: “The Saudi programme of feature and short films, of which many are directed by female filmmakers, speak to the very best of Saudi filmmaking. They don’t hesitate to explore the different genres of cinema ranging from suspense to thriller, to social themes and relationships, to show us Saudi society in its richness. They indicate an industry that is flourishing, both in terms of the diversity and content on screen, and point to the bright future that this young film industry has. We are thrilled to be able to give these filmmakers a platform to share their work on the international stage.” These films include Junoon by directors Maan B. and Yaser B. Khalid; Route 10 by Omar Naim; Quareer by Ragheed Al Nahdi, Norah Almowald, Ruba Khafagy, Fatma Alhazmi and Noor Alameer; Fay’s Palette by Anas Ba-Tahaf; Becoming by Sara Mesfer, Jawaher Alamri, Noor Alameer, Hind Alfahhad and Fatima Al-Banawi; Kayan by Hakeem Jomaah; and Cinema Al-Hara by Faizah Ambah. PRO
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PROAI
BROADCASTPRO SUMMIT: A PLACE TO EXPLORE INDUSTRY SECRETS The summit has long served as a regional platform for the industry to exchange ideas and experiences on evolving trends in the market and each edition has drawn a larger international audience. This year's summit discussions will be carried across two editions of BroadcastPro.
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PROAI
EXPLORING THE POWER OF AI
AI experts across MENA broadcast gathered to look at the impact of this evolving technology on various aspects of newsgathering, production, contribution and distribution. Nicolas Hans, Partner at Broadcast Solutions Middle East and Africa, and the moderator of this panel sums up the discussion for us
BROADCAST SOLUTIONS
Nicolas Hans
E XPO 2020
Esteban Galan
ASHARQ NE WS
DISCOVERY, ME A AND TURKE Y
Kathey Battrick
TÜRK TELEKOM
Umut Keten
AI is the new electricity. It has become ubiquitous in every consumer’s life. With every tweet, Facebook post or social media swipe, an AI recommendation engine is involved. The recent Facebook Files from the Wall Street Journal demonstrated AI’s impact on our collective perception of reality. Beyond social media platforms, AI is booming across all industries. Society is experiencing the fourth wave of AI. The first started a decade ago with internet AI ruling web sites and mobile apps; four years later, business AI affected financial services, medical,
VITEC
Bassem Maher
Fadi Jumaa
NE WSBRIDGE
Frederic Petitpont
logistics and back-office systems. Then five years ago, perception AI rolled out across smart homes, smart cities and smart factories. Today, the fourth wave, autonomous AI, has led to the boom in drones, robotics and autonomous vehicles. The broadcast industry is no stranger to the AI revolution, and Netflix claims to save a billion dollars every year thanks to cognitive technologies. To better tackle the state of AI technology across broadcast and streaming media, the technology panel at the ASBU BroadcastPro summit featured three media professionals, one telecom operator and two technologists.
December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 17
PROAI
Kathey Battrick, Senior Manager, Library and Media Management at Asharq News, shared her experience deploying AI in her archiving department. Bassem Maher, Head of Operations Discovery, MEA and Turkey, explained how AI is supporting the launch of the Discovery+ OTT offering. Esteban Galan, Lead Manager, Broadcast Technical, Media Services, Expo 2020, explored how media distribution and live production are both affected by AI services. These media professionals were complemented by Umut Keten, Senior Architect at Türk Telekom, who shared his insights on how neural networks are used to monitor internet and mobile telephony networks, and two technologists: Fadi Jumaa, Director of Business Development at VITEC, and Frederic Petitpont, CTO of Newsbridge, a French startup specialising in content indexing using Multimodal AI. We were keen to understand what AI stands for and how it is already in use across media organisations. From setting the stage to going under the hood and exploring the challenges AI presents, the debate was lively.
“It is predicted that the AI market in the sports industry will grow 30% every year until 2027. It will reach $3.5bn” Esteban Galan, Lead Manager, Broadcast Technical, Media Services, Expo 2020 AI is not new; it turned 65 this year Since the start of the year, $50bn has been invested in AI, according to the CB Insights ‘State of AI’ Q3 2021 report. According to PWC, AI will create $15.7tn in value by 2030. And things are accelerating. As an AI evangelist, Umut Keten from Türk Telekom sees AI as generally misunderstood. “Everybody thinks AI is like a consciousness or something human-like, when the basic principle of AI is much simpler. AI is just a way for a machine to decide on its own without human intervention.” For Frederic Petitpont from
The panel agreed that AI's carbon footprint appears to be high.
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Newsbridge, the reasons for the boom in AI technology in the last decade were not limited to the increase in CPU and GPU power and the availability of cloud resources. Code sharing and increased collaboration across organisations are essential drivers of this AI renaissance. “Science laboratories and universities are sharing how they're working and designing their systems. You're no longer starting from scratch anymore.” All agree that the new approach to AI – which has partially abandoned the development of rule-based engines for neural networks – relies first and foremost on the relevance of datasets. These datasets are critical because they are used to train AI engines and are the cornerstone of the concept of machine learning. “Neural networks are the engine and datasets the oil,” concluded Petitpont. AI speech-to-text and translation are changing archives and distribution At Asharq, which launched just a year ago, Kathey Battrick went all-in with AI when she set up the archives department. “We wanted to use
PROAI
AI to help us preserve and create rich metadata for our content. We considered three key areas: labels and the flexibility to customise metadata; people and the possibility to reference new faces and personalities; proper support for both English and Arabic.” For Esteban Galan from Expo 2020 Dubai, automatic translation of metadata and transcripts across the three official languages of the exhibition – Arabic, English and French – was the “coolest feature”. He detailed how AI combined with cloud infrastructure facilitates the distribution of videos and stills to media organisations worldwide, to promote the image and increase the reach of Expo 2020. Bassem Maher explained that the focus for implementing AI at Discovery is primarily distribution and enhancing the consumer experience, with the recent launch of the Discovery+ OTT platform and the creation of new services across Siri and Alexa digital assistants. Although he recognised that AI for production was still a work in progress, he projected a coming adoption to manage the seventy languages Discovery broadcasts in. He was confident about the roll-out, considering that Discovery operates 160 channels on AWS and can easily leverage cloud AI services. AI is changing the world of sport Galan, who has been involved with the Olympics since 2012, shared the growing impact of AI in sports. “It is predicted that the AI market in the sports industry will grow 30% every year until 2027. It will reach $3.5bn.” Convinced that the broadcast industry will follow a similar adoption pattern, he foresees the deployment of AI in live production. “Supercomputing will help, because the power of the processing power is getting much more powerful. The democratisation of the cloud is making storage and access to data much faster, and the deployment of 5G networks will only accelerate that further. I think
A full house at the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit on November 16 at the Westin Mina Seyahi, Dubai.
that when all these are aligned, we will see AI used in high-end productions.” For Fadi Jumaa, the impact of AI on remote production already became a reality at the recent Tokyo Olympics. “We partnered with Eurosport to transmit the Olympics. Because of the Covid crisis, we took live feeds and sent these to commentators in the comfort and safety of their homes. They added their live comments, and the signal was sent back to
Olympic production facilities in Tokyo.” In his eyes, AI technology that streamlines video encoding enables new business models. “Covid dictated this remote production at the Olympics in Tokyo. But later, it was realised as a very viable business model because it saves a lot of money and improves the return on investment broadcasters like Eurosport make buying sports content.”
“We still have manual metadata we create, but it’s vastly complemented by the huge amount of metadata the AI platform could generate for us”
AI helps manage telecom networks and reduce OTT churn As detailed by Umut Keten, AI is already used at scale by telecom operators. “In a telco, the network is big. There can be many outages, and one outage can relate to ten different causes. When operators monitor the network, they may get twenty alarms and little time to determine the root cause of that problem. That’s where AI makes our lives easier.” Beyond monitoring the state of the network, Umut explained how AI helps telcos optimise data traffic for OTT providers: “As an internet provider, we support OTT services. AI monitors user traffic and knows where people connect to, what their latency is and what type of traffic they're downloading. According to that, you can determine which customers have a good experience and which do not. We use this to determine what kind of outages cause customers to churn.” Moving forward, Keten believes that telcos and OTT service providers
Kathey Battrick, Senior Manager, Library and Media Management, Asharq News
December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 19
PROAI
Fadi Jumaa (second from left) commented that the impact of AI on remote production was already evident at the recent Tokyo Olympics.
should collaborate to further optimise AI monitoring. “OTT providers should work closer with the telco providers, deciding where their CDNs should be located. When a leading OTT provider such as Netflix launches a new series like the new season of The Witcher, you can immediately see on the network many people trying to reach one location, all at the same time. Our systems understand that as a denialof-service attack and act accordingly. It just triggers a false positive!” False positives: the AI disease For Petitpont, “False positives are the disease of AI.” He illustrated such false positives by explaining that football player Ángel Di María of Paris Saint-Germain looks like Franz Kafka, and both are identified as the same person by a facial recognition engine. “When it comes to cognitive services, there are different ways to tackle false positives. The first one is feedback learning to improve the dataset, but that requires many actions from users. The second is to improve the quality of your original dataset, improving the quality of the pictures you give the AI to learn from. Finally, the last one is to use multimodal or multi-role AI. With multimodal AI, you don’t limit yourself to the vectors of the face. You use all other available contextual data for better results. Multimodal is used a lot in the medical field. To identify a specific disease, you need to consider all the symptoms.”
From Battrick’s perspective, false positives are not that frequent. “I can't say we've seen a huge volume of false positives. It does happen, but we took the decision early on that we were going to manually review and approve all the people suggested by the AI, to ensure that everything we import back into our media asset management system is 100% accurate.”
“When operators monitor the network, they may get twenty alarms and little time to determine the root cause of that problem. That’s where AI makes our lives easier” Umut Keten, Senior Architect, Türk Telekom
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AI will affect production and change jobs At Asharq, AI is not replacing humans but working for them. “The news librarian or archivist role will not go, and that's never been the intention. We need that role. We still have manual metadata we create, but it's vastly complemented by the huge amount of metadata the AI platform could generate for us.” Not all panellists were as confident of the future impact of AI on jobs. For Galan, “Once we use computer vision for camera tracking, automated highlights, automated graphics, it will reduce the number of people sitting in OB vans and impact live production.” AI has a serious carbon footprint Meanwhile, AI already affects the planet. Petitpont explained: “When you are running on a public cloud provider, it's a challenge to estimate your carbon emissions. We need to decorrelate the time and the energy you need to train the dataset from the resources required to use the engine. Every time a user is using AI, we need to know how energy is consumed.” According to Jumaa, AI can play a role in helping decrease energy consumption: “For the green MPEG GreenPEG initiative, we will incorporate an AI programme that will optimise how much energy is spent by each device. At VITEC, we plan to be carbonneutral by the end of the year.” A brave new world Asked what advice she would give to an editor-in-chief or head librarian deciding to roll out AI technology across their operations, Battrick was blunt. “My first piece of advice is to be brave! Change can be scary. The second one would be to run a good proof of concept and understand your business and user requirements, to make sure that the content or the metadata coming back meets those needs.” PRO
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PROSTREAMING
TAKING STREAMING TO THE NEXT LEVEL With the rise in prominence of streaming services, winning share of time, mind and wallet has become critical in an increasingly crowded market. This panel explored new strategies and discussed how to market, manage and monetise content, and build a subscriber base that sticks around
AMANDA TURNBULL AS SOCIATES
Amanda Turnbull
ATEME
Jean-Louis Lods
STAR ZPL AY
COMCAST TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS
Martin Webb
As more streamers enter the market and consumers subscribe to multiple OTT services, this panel looked at the technical and operational means to crack navigation and discoverability across services. They looked at how to take streaming to the next level. On the panel were Danny Bates, CCO and co-founder of StarzPlay; James Walmsley, Director of Entertainment Products, Intigral; Jean-Louis Lods, VP Media Supply Chain Solutions at ATEME; Martin Webb, Senior Product Manager, Cloud TV, Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS); Nadine Samra,
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INTIGR AL
Danny Bates
James Walmsley
WE Y YAK BY ZEE
Nadine Samra
VIU
Rohit D’silva
Chief Business Officer, Weyyak by Zee; and Rohit D’silva, Chief Business Officer, Middle East & South Africa, Viu. Moderator Amanda Turnbull, CEO Amanda Turnbull Associates, first took the audience through an overview of the current status of streaming services in the region and how platforms are trying to stand out from the crowd. Directing her first query at Rohit D’silva, she asked him to elaborate on his ‘staying in lane’ stance with Viu. “The reason this space is competitive is because it is obviously the present and the future of this industry. We have experienced
PROSTREAMING
intense competition in Southeast Asia, where you have the big global giants on the one hand and the big Chinese players on the other. And in that space, we have found a way to be in and we enjoyed over 50 million MAUs for H1 and second in terms of streaming minutes,” D’silva said, adding that remaining focused on content relevant to the space in which Viu is operating, and identifying the right kind of content, is vital. “As this game gets more competitive, we would rather stay in lane and make sure we have as much fuel as possible, as in money, and we think being focused and delivering on that proposition is where we are best suited.” Viu offers an AVOD and SVOD model, which D’silva says is ideal for this market. “Consumers have the option of staying on in the free layer or moving up. So there’s space to grow and scale within that segment ... Also, because consumption is led by a mobile device, an easy entry and easy exit is important to take streaming to the next level.” Nadine Samra, who heads Weyyak, an Arabic-language AVOD-SVOD service built within the Zee entertainment framework, said the platform has been going from strength to strength thanks to its Indian content. The team has built on that with investment in Arabic original productions as well as dubbing Indian content. “The huge library of Indian content we have is our main USP. We are also investing heavily in a lot of Arabic originals; we have localised our product so that people feel like it’s their own,” she commented. Weyyak has also acquired a lot of Arabic originals from the GCC, Syria and Egypt, and Samra added that the team has been very active on the content side, the marketing side, the telco partnership side and the advertising side. As a vendor, Turnbull questioned how Comcast Technology Solutions
“Our acquisition costs are one-sixth to one-seventh of the standard acquisition cost on sport. It has made a real difference to our acquisition strategy and how we onboard customers onto our platform” Danny Bates, CCO and co-founder, StarzPlay was connecting the world and what was essential in order to achieve flexibility and agility for streaming services. As the CTS cloud TV solutions unites them with global brands across all segments, Martin Webb offered four recommendations. First, you need to be where your audience is, which means being present on smart TVs, not just mobile devices. “Our white paper, called Riding the Premium Content Wave, focused specifically on this region and showed how large-screen viewing, which made less than 20% of overall video consumption before
the pandemic, grew to over 70% at the peak and even now has only fallen back to 50%. Therefore, ensuring functionality to target all screens in a uniform manner is essential in that time, device and place shifting won’t be barriers to content consumption.” Second, we must be responsive to emerging ideas in the market, and companies must be ready from a tech and organisation point of view to adapt to those changing trends. Third, he recommended building one-to-one relationships with consumers, urging broadcasters to create an aggregated and anonymised dataset – but most importantly be holistic, and be able to track consumer consumption across the whole catalogue. “You don’t want silos in that data.” Finally, platforms must be open to adopting flexible business models. The single-tier SVOD market has moved on, and since consumers have limits to SVOD stacking, AVOD offers that beachhead to get one’s service in, he pointed out. He added: “Cloud gives you that unifying point to target all these platforms in a single way. From where we see it, broadcasters and operators are on a digital transformation
December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 23
PROSTREAMING
The OTT panel brought together a mix of stakeholders who explored strategies to up the streaming game.
journey, where online becomes a core part of their overall strategy. Being in the cloud with the right kind of video platform is important in order to achieve scalability with highly concurrent events, because those platforms use micro services, although that misses out programmability. We would advocate using micro services where each service is opened up so that services are combined like interlocking bricks, allowing the video platform to adapt to your strategy rather than forcing your strategy to adapt to the video platform.” As platforms scale, there are also some fundamentals of technology that will help create that finer viewer experience. Jean-Louis Lods stepped in to elaborate. “At ATEME, we really work and focus on the video playing level so the end-to-end experience is important, from the football stadium through to the glass of the user experience. We focus fundamentally on how to make the video experience of the best quality for the user no matter their device, and based on that the quality of the encoding and the timely distribution of that content that quality of experience extends … so, for instance, how quickly does my service start up when I request my programming, which is coming through from the middleware from CTS. And it’s that user experience that really is always going to be so important for platforms as they scale.
“So how does the business scale using the lowest bitrates at the highest quality so the consumer that is consuming the entertainment is having a premium experience while the network costs, the storage costs and everything associated with delivering that service is at the optimal level to enable the platform and the service
“Customers are no longer choosing just a single streaming service and content providers are starting to push their own applications over content buyout agreements in some cases” James Walmsley, Director of Entertainment Products, Intigral
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content providers to really scale their business? You start dovetailing this to the other associated factors around and ask how do you deliver video to the consumer. “We talk about sport, and latency comes into this. It’s very important: how do I not have that spoiler effect where my neighbour has experienced a goal and 10 or 20 seconds later, I see that goal appear on my screen? By offering that end-to-end experience and services of the encoding, origin and packaging of that CDN, we can enable the delivery of services which become ultra-low in latency and match the same delivery technologies as traditional DTT cable and satellite.” Roping James Walmsley in, Turnbull asked about the idea of Intigral becoming a super aggregator and to explain his ‘own the coffee table and not necessarily the screen’ analogy. Providing some perspective, Walmsley said that Intigral has, from the outset, “been building a product that features its own content while also showcasing content from other providers”. “This sums up the next phase of where we want to be. We have been building out Jawwy TV to showcase content from other providers in the way they would want their content presented. We have partnered with StarzPlay for many years, amongst others, and decided to give content owners their own space on our platform rather than curate it as we see fit including ingesting the same genres, categories and promotional carousels they design for their own services. Content owners invest a lot of time and effort into curating their library so it makes sense to us to make sure that is translated to their presentation within Jawwy TV. We also have a very diverse range of customers in diverse countries, demanding a wide variety of content verticals to cater to them and necessitating a different presentation and curation strategy. Providers want
PROSTREAMING
to control the way they sell their content and this plays a little more into where we are going in the future because every service, us included, invest a lot of time in scheduling and curating their content whether it be Arabic, Western or Khaleeji. “Going forward for us, and coming back to the coffee table analogy, we will put as much focus on our content partners as we do on our own library. We realise that the market is evolving; customers are no longer choosing just a single streaming service and content providers are starting to push their own applications over content buyout agreements in some cases. Netflix set the trend in only allowing their content to be showcased by them through their native applications, but other players are moving in that direction, with Amazon Prime and Disney+ launching in this fashion. We want to be ready for this move and be in a position to offer our customers the best of both worlds. By offering customers a great baseline of our own titles, complemented by our partners’ libraries and third-party applications, we believe we can remain at the centre of the customer’s experience
“We are also investing heavily in a lot of Arabic originals; we have localised our product so that people feel like it’s their own” Nadine Samra, Chief Business Officer, Weyyak by Zee even when it’s not our content on the main screen. Of course, this does come with additional challenges, requiring us to think differently about how we measure success, but in the long term we believe this is the best solution we can offer to our current and prospective customer base.” In the meantime, StarzPlay has been partnering with different content partners. Its most recent achievement has been cracking a smart way of getting sports assets on its platform. “The great thing about sport is its organic reach. It has been a big evolution
for us, the customer influx and the acquisition costs,” commented Danny Bates, highlighting a combined organic acquisition of 60-70% subscribers coming into the platform. “Our acquisition costs are one-sixth to one-seventh of the standard acquisition cost on sport. It has made a real difference to our acquisition strategy and how we onboard customers onto our platform. It is really not even about standing out from the crowd, but being part of the crowd.” Turnbull asked what that meant for content navigation and discovery. “We are lucky that our DNA is rooted in digital marketing and performance marketing,” said D’silva. “Everyone runs their funnel differently; the beauty is that there’s no one-size formula that works. We are looking at adjacent industries that will provide us with a user base, such as influencers, who consume things in the way we are all designing products, so this space is moving faster and the good thing is there are more ways to address these issues; the only constant is the need for more money.” Did Weyyak have a slightly
ATEME's Jean-Louis Lods (fourth from left) pointed out that the end-to-end video experience is important to the user irrespective of the device they use, and that ensuring quality of experience will remain important as platforms scale.
December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 25
PROSTREAMING
different approach? “I like to tap into the idea of being part of the crowd,” said Samra, “there’s space for us all. The MENA and the Arabic audience can consume multiple OTT services. So out of the eight or six hours that a user spends, if we find half an hour or one hour, we are happy; if we can achieve that, we’re successful.” A creative and experimental attitude has played a predominant role in the Weyyak strategy. “We have adopted a ‘why don’t we try this out’ approach,” commented Samra. “If things don’t work for us, we move on, we learn.” Walmsley agreed with Samra about space for multiple people at different times in a customer’s journey. “In terms of content discovery, the challenge will be a metadata one, but the breadth of content is expanding, technology is also improving, and as we move through the next few years, things will get better.” Creative level changes are taking place in content delivery too, altering viewer features and delivering whole new experiences, Lods highlighted. “We have a thing called film grain synthesis, which takes the noise or the film grain that was captured and put on purpose by the director, that is often not seen by the consumer. We can now synthesise that film grain and reproduce at player level while saving enormously on bandwidth, almost 90%. So delivering the experience to the consumer which is as real as what was endeavoured by the director becomes vitally important about how you differentiate your content and give it a feel of ownership to the actual user.” With all the different content, segmentation and audiences, how are channels bringing content to the fore? Bates pointed out that what was once about acquisition marketing has now evolved into content discovery experience and communication with the customer, curating services, surfacing technology,
“Ensuring functionality to target all screens in a uniform manner is essential in that time, device and place shifting won’t be barriers to content consumption” Martin Webb, Senior Product Manager, Cloud TV, Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) recommendation engines and so on. “It is really about acquisition, getting those big shows, bringing people on; second, giving them something new to stay in; and thirdly, the win-back cycle. Give customers a good experience as they leave, so that they come back.” James countered that while sports in itself is a big draw, providing content and value between actual consumption is crucial to getting subscribers to return. “Retaining that base or bringing them back will be the next big challenge.” Picking on from Walmsley’s point about metadata, Webb stressed the need The cost of sports rights makes it difficult to make it work on OTT, said Rohit D'silva.
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for quality and completeness of metadata, but also highlighted the key element of consistency. “We see situations where fragmentation in how video services are implemented lead to a number of different metadata databases, which can lead to consumer confusion in the content discovery process. So quality is important, but I would like to see consistency too.” Closing, Turnbull asked D’silva if having a ‘good departure’, as Bates had phrased it, chimed with his views. “I have a different perspective on sports. While what the StarzPlay team is doing is fantastic in trying to find new ways to engage with sport, the cost of sports rights makes it difficult to make it work on OTT. Sport can give outsized returns, but you also need an outsized bet. Having said that, like the rest of the streaming services, things will evolve and hopefully sports streaming will become viable in the future.” The discussion ended with how sports services are getting increasingly more pragmatic and how sharing rights costs and partnering with telcos could help build those “outsized” bets to reach wider regions and larger audience bases. PRO
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28 | www.broadcastprome.com | December 2021
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HONOURING THE WINNERS OF 2021
The ASBU BroadcastPro Awards 2021 edition in Dubai, hosted on November 16, honoured the champions whose passion, ability and tech know-how have taken the industry to an unheralded era of innovation The 11th edition of the ASBU BroadcastPro Awards in Dubai once again proved a powerful barometer of the trends shaping regional broadcasting and streaming. The ‘content is king’ mantra has never felt truer than now, when content innovators are playing an increasingly important role in deciding where the smart money should be spent. With the OTT revolution, new ways of delivering content are introducing a brand new set of dynamics – and on 16 November, the champions of these new working styles were honoured at a gala ceremony at the Westin Mina Seyahi, Dubai. Earlier in the day, the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit focused on critical areas of content curation and delivery, while the content game-changers who excelled with their pioneering spirit were featured in the night’s Awards line-up. The ASBU BroadcastPro Awards do not aim to just acknowledge the big players whose budgets and global outreach lead the way. They also honour the smaller, outlier businesses whose breakthroughs are
paving the way for a new industry landscape. The awards are well-known for their regional scope and each year, BroadcastPro ME tries to celebrate winners across different regional markets. This year saw some remarkable projects from the UAE, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and North Africa that mirrored a number of key initiatives in these countries, with companies at the vanguard of industry ambitions and performance. While two awards were reserved for the satellite segment, 18 awards were given away in the broadcast segment. A big thank you to our judges this year: Afzal Lakdawala, Head of Digital Transformation, ARM Holding; Badih Fattouh, CEO, Creative Venture; Hassan Chahine, founder & CEO, Media Digital Space; Heba Korayem, Content Market Consultant , H.consult; Mustafa Tell, GM of Broadcast Operations, ART, Jordan; Rochdi Nouira, Head Engineer, Deputy Director, Technical Department, Tunisian Radio; Sanjay Raina, Media & Entertainment Consultant; and Vijaya Cherian, Editor, BroadcastPro Middle East.
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Broadcast Awards BEST TV PRODUCTION OF THE YEAR
Qayd Majhoul – OSN Qayd Majhool, OSN’s first Arabic original production, is a psycho-thriller drama series that entertains superbly while also highlighting mental illness – a topic that most producers tend to skirt around for want of knowing how to tackle it appropriately. This production saw renowned Arab celebrities take on intense roles and is testimony to how producers and broadcasters are willing to push the boundaries of storytelling in the MENA region. Besides the innovative storytelling, this one impressed for great direction and high production values. Pictured with the award is Rolla Karam, SVP Content Acquisition – Programming, OSN.
BEST OTT PRODUCTION OF THE YEAR
Nemra Etnein – Shahid This series is an impressive combination of independent stories that bravely explore modern relationships in the Arab world. It received an almost unanimous vote of confidence from the judges over other competing entries for its compelling and bold storytelling, slick look and overall quality of production. Its take on relationships without making any judgements perhaps added to the appeal. The trailer screened at the awards gala was received with loud applause. Ali Ghamloush (l), Head of Originals – Shahid, received the award from Nitin Michael, co-founder of SynProNize.
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Broadcast Awards BEST CONTENT STRATEGY OF THE YEAR
NINETNINE Ninetnine, a young content distribution company, has disrupted the way Arab broadcasters monetise their content overseas. Ninetnine took a dataanalytics approach and helped create targeted TV bundles for the Arab and North African diaspora in Europe and the Americas, adapting them to different markets. Its content strategy helped reshape Arabic content consumption in Europe. More recently, Ninetnine became the exclusive distributor of MBC channels in Europe, with TV rights to its linear channels. For its game-changing approach to catering to the Arab diaspora while helping regional content owners monetise their assets, Ninetnine took home the award. Ninetnine co-founders Adel Hamla (l) and Samir Zehani with the award.
FILM INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR
Italia Film This award was created to recognise a company that has helped to bring audiences back to the big screen through its regional initiatives. Italia Film was the first to get a distribution licence in Saudi Arabia when the country lifted its 35-year ban on cinema. It launched the first movie in Saudi theatres with Black Panther. It still tops the charts for the highest ever grossing movie in the region with Aladdin. Recently, it hit a milestone by being the first distribution company in 2021 to reach more than 2m admissions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia after only nine months of film releases. John Chahine (l), GM, UAE & Gulf Lower region, Italia Film received the award from Hasnaa Descuns, co-founder of SynProNize. December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 31
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Broadcast Awards BEST RADIO INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR
Ministry of Information Affairs – Radio Project, Kingdom of Bahrain This project stood out for the $6.5m makeover that the Kingdom of Bahrain's Ministry of Information Affairs (MIA) undertook in conjunction with systems integrator Glocom for Bahrain Radio during the pandemic, transitioning it from the legacy analogue facility that was built in the '80s to the state-ofthe-art digital setup that is now on air. Eng Abdulla Ahmed Albalooshi (l), Assistant Undersecretary for Technical Affairs at the MIA, received the award from Baher Al Zaher, Managing Director for RCS MENA.
BROADCASTPRO ME INNOVATIVE PROJECT OF THE YEAR
Expo 2020 Dubai Expo 2020 bagged this award for a MAM underaking that helped facilitate the distribution and access of high-resolution videos, audio and stills on a global scale to all media. The project minimised on-premise deployment by using cloud-based services and leveraged AI technologies to optimise content indexing and cataloguing. The system could cater to 250 users at any given time, allowing them to download high-res content at the same time. Mandy Keegan (l), Vice President, Expo 2020 Dubai, and Pedro Freitas (r), Senior Manager Media Asset Management, Expo 2020, received the award from Razik Zaghlouli (c), Regional Director MENA, ATEME.
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Broadcast Awards BEST 2021 TECH IMPLEMENTATION IN OTT
Home Plus Network (H+) When Hares Consultancy conducted a study into streaming services, it discovered that an OTT app’s success depends almost entirely on the ease of content discovery. The research also showed that customers preferred a single provider to make available all the TV services they want to watch on one platform. This led Hares Consultancy to create the region’s first OTT aggregation platform – no small feat – where consumers can search and stream content and manage multiple subscriptions. Frederic Petitpont (r), co-founder and CTO of Newsbridge, presented the award to Ammar Hares, CEO and co-founder of Lovetodomedia and the company behind H+.
OUTSTANDING SPORTS INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR
IP Studios When IP Studios was entrusted with the opportunity to bring two combat sports to the UAE across multiple platforms, the Abu Dhabi entity went all out. It collaborated with international partners to bring the sport to the region, and built a whole production ecosystem and a calendar of TV events around it. It also built an app to feature live games, VOD content and training programmes for subscribers. Essentially, it helped ignite the dreams of martial arts athletes and unleashed real-life superheroes, offering them a stage to shine. For these initiatives, IP Studios stood head and shoulders above other entries. Mohamad Yehya (l), Founding Director of IP Studios, received the award from Klaus-Joerg Jasper, Senior Sales Director Middle East and CIS, Lawo. December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 33
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Broadcast Awards STREAMING SERVICE OF THE YEAR
Shahid Shahid is a shining example of a product that MBC has nurtured with investment and talent, and the team has delivered a successful streaming service, with highquality content, a great user interface and a fantastic viewer experience. It produced 25 originals in 2021, versus 12 in 2020. It had 2m subscribers by the end of Ramadan 2021, versus 1.4m subscribers by Ramadan 2020. It is the first Arabic platform to bring pretheatrical films to a streaming platform. It now has a user interface in Arabic, English and French. For the first time, over 40 new Arabic titles were shown on a single platform during Ramadan. Guy Spivack (r), Regional Commercial Director MENA of Comcast Technology Solutions, presented the award to Natasha Matos-Hemingway, Group Chief Commercial Officer (VOD), MBC Group.
MENA TRENDSETTER OF THE YEAR
Cedars Art Production For the first time, this award went to a production house and is testimony to the rising significance of Arabic content and formats that are now travelling to international shores. While Turkish drama series are popular in the Arab world, for the first time an Arabic format – Al Hayba (a Cedars Art Production series), one of the region’s most successful five-season drama series – was sold to a leading production house in Turkey. The production house was also the first to distribute Arabic content on a wide scale internationally. Pictured here with the award is Sadek Sabbah, CEO of Cedars Art Production (Sabbah Brothers).
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Broadcast Awards SYSTEMS INTEGRATOR OF THE YEAR
Wave Media Solutions We had some heavyweights contending for this category, but Wave Media Solutions was chosen for bringing its systems integration expertise to Iraq. In the last 12 months, this systems integrator has completed six projects in Iraq. It integrated Iraq’s largest studio for Al Sharqiya TV in Kurdistan. From studio robotics and full studio automation to advanced VR and AR graphics to large videowalls with advanced videowall graphics, it has been responsible for some robust installations in the country. Zaid Wattar, Managing Director of Wave Media Solutions, is featured here with the award.
OUTSTANDING KIDS’ CONTENT INITIATIVE
Spacetoon Spacetoon has been involved in some remarkable work with kids. It released 30 new titles, 20 TV events and five movies targeting 6-18-yearolds in 2021. A new customised TV block targeting Arab mothers and preschoolers led to 60m views in March 2021 when it was launched. Since January 2021, subscriptions on its YouTube channel have hit 6.6m, a 2.2m increase since December 2020. The launch of The Moshaya Family Animation saw a further increase of 100K subscribers on its YouTube channel. All this led to higher acquisition and viewership in 2021. Media & Entertainment consultant Sanjay Raina (l) presented the award to Edy Saaiby, Head Of Sales – Digital & TV at SpaceToon Kids TV. December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 35
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Broadcast Awards OUTSTANDING OB PROJECT OF THE YEAR
INC System Integrations DMCC – 4K IP OB van for Sharjah Broadcasting Authority This award recognised INC for successfully integrating one of the region's first IP UHD ST-2110 OB vans for Sharjah Broadcasting Authority (SBA). Equipped with eight LDX-86 4K native cameras (but wired for 12), this expandable trailer supports the production of content in 4K/UHD HDR format, as well as HD. The vehicle has since been used to cover two live events successfully. INC founder and chairman Mohammed Zaim (l) received the award from Adil Memon, VP – Content and Marketing Head at Zee Entertainment.
ENTERTAINMENT APP OF THE YEAR
Fannbox App Who wouldn’t like a celebrity to sing at their wedding or at their children’s party? The Fannbox app from Rotana Audio Visual offers users the ability to book their favourite Arabic singer or celebrity and have them perform virtually in their private events or special occasions such as weddings, engagements, graduation parties, even corporate events, while offering an engaging experience to all attendees. The app caters to the music and entertainment needs of Arab fans all over the world but is targeted primarily at users in the GCC, North Africa and the Levant region. Nesreen Hamdan Hasayen (r), Fannbox Director, received the award from Hasan Sayed Hasan, Managing Director of Master Media.
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Broadcast Awards BROADCAST EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR
Manoj A Mathew, Exec. VP & Territory Head (MENAPT), Zee Network Manoj Mathew has taken Zee to new heights since he took charge of the revenue and the creative side of the company's business in MENA. As passionate about technology as he is about content, he boldly launched new products in the market. He was part of the launch team for Zee's Arabic channels and led the network’s foray into original content production and Arabic remakes as well as co-productions of all foreign language content. Manoj (l) received the award from John Illingworth, Sales Director at Bitmovin.
CTO OF THE YEAR
Peter Riz, CTO, OSN Peter Riz made headlines when he completely reshaped OSN's streaming app, transitioning it in record time from the old app burdened by legacy coding to a brand-new platform that uses new technology to drive agility and ensure adaptability. He helped architect the new app that is designed with machine-learning capabilities to help make sharper predictions and recommendations based on customers’ preferences and viewing habits. He also placed emphasis on the app’s intuitive user interface being tailored with cutting-edge solutions through a strategic partnership with software partners. Pictured here with the award is Peter Riz. December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 37
PROAWARDS
Broadcast Awards SPECIAL RECOGNITION – UAE PRODUCTION
Al Sununu, Visioneers Holding We have seen an exceptional drama series emerge from Visioneers Holding, an Emirati-led production team in the UAE. Al Sununu was developed, produced and shot in Dubai from inception to release. The storyline is a reflection of life in Dubai, which brings together people from different cultures; it showcases the beauty of its diversity despite cultural and social differences through a compelling plot. With some big names, a slick production and an outstanding story line, Al Sununu won our hearts. Younis Alkanzy (l), Head of Production, Visioneers, received the award from Paul Wallis, Chief of Revenue B2B, The Entertainer.
SPECIAL RECOGNITION – KSA PROJECT
VITEC When the Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia was looking to bring some of its weekly horseracing coverage to an international audience via internet streaming channels, they deployed an encoder from Vitec to achieve this. This solution eliminates the need for a satellite truck, saving considerable cost. The broadcast workflow only uses the public internet and is able to power multiple streams and provide remote monitoring from anywhere in the world. The current setup can provide 4K resolution, should it be desired. Pictured with the award is Aurélie Albert (l), Marketing and Communication Manager, and Nicolas Pons, VP – Business Development, Middle East, VITEC.
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PROAWARDS
Satellite Awards SATELLITE OPERATOR OF THE YEAR
YAHSAT Yahsat hit major milestones on multiple fronts this year. In February 2021, it collaborated with a local entity to develop technologies and produce satcom products. In July, it created history by becoming the first UAE-based space entity to go public. Its mobility business secured distribution contracts worth AED 316m this year and reported a net profit of AED 159m for the first nine months of 2021. The top line brought in revenue of AED 1bn, demonstrating a strong performance since Q1 2021. It also serves as an incubator of homegrown engineering talent through its Space Programme. Yahsat CTO Adnan Al Muhairi (l) received the award from Amanda Turnbull.
SATELLITE SOLUTIONS PROVIDER OF THE YEAR
ST Engineering iDirect ST Engineering iDirect teamed up with Broadpeak, EasyBroadcast and EKT to demonstrate the first end-to-end B2C use case of native IP, showcasing origination, transport, reception and consumption of live OTT video over satellite. Broadpeak’s solutions packaged the transcoded streams into OTT formats, ST Engineering iDirect integrated its SCPC or VSAT solution for the modulation and multicast transmission of the content over satellite, EKT's STB partner delivered the content to TV or mobile, and EasyBroadcast showed its 'edge' solution. Heba Korayem (r) of H.Consult presented the award to Tajani Bouqentar, GM MEA, ST Engineering iDirect. PRO December 2021 | www.broadcastprome.com | 39
PROROUNDTABLE
THE ROADMAP TO DIGITAL INNOVATION In Dubai’s Kempinski Hotel, the Grass Valley Middle East Tech Summit tackled some of the most challenging aspects of digital transformation, bringing together front-line decision-makers
The answers to the perennial question ‘Should there be a full-on migration to cloud?’ are becoming more complex and pressing. The GVx Middle East Tech Summit, titled Digital Transformation in Action, assessed the practical and commercial implications of the debate, bringing together key industry decisionmakers well-versed in understanding the challenges and opportunities of full digital transition. Well-known for its end-to-end ecosystem of reliable, open standards-based solutions, Grass Valley joined forces with BroadcastPro to deliver an important closeddoor discussion that focused on a highly practical agenda and assessed the most viable roadmaps for change.
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New branding, new capabilities Setting the scene for the debate, kick-start presentations from Louis Hernandez, Jr – founder, CEO and Managing Director of Black Dragon Capital – as well as the owner of Grass Valley and other top management, focused on the key criteria attracting Grass Valley to the Middle East market, as well as showcasing the company’s new branding. For Grass Valley, the region’s appeal is best summed up by the continuing positive outlook for growth, with worldclass events such as Expo 2020 Dubai and the 2022 World Cup setting global enterprise benchmarks. Other factors include how the regional industry is pre-eminently in a state of transition, with new production complex and expensive,
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the rising costs of media rights, an explosion of distribution platforms and the marked rise of OTT services. During this period of transition, Grass Valley says it is positioned to support media companies’ business transformation; efficiently create and distribute specialty content; unify linear, streaming and social workflows; eliminate the risk of new revenue models; and – critically – increase operating efficiencies. Tim Banks, Vice President of Sales for EMEA, made special reference to Grass Valley’s recent wins in the region, including Abu Dhabi Media’s investment in GV cameras, switchers, replay and IP infrastructure for Expo 2020. Other upcoming projects include Al Jazeera’s GV deployment for Studio 5, the first AMPP MSP (Managed Service Provider) agreement with AVC delivering remote production for regional sports events, and the 2022 World Cup’s adoption of GV cameras and switchers, as well as other big wins including Asharq in Saudi Arabia, participation in the Arab Cup in Qatar and the IBC Accelerator Projects (5G and AMPP) along with beIN, Ooredoo and Al Jazeera. This was followed by two interesting case studies – one from Gordon Castle, SVP Technology and Operations EMEA Eurosport/ Discovery at Discovery Inc, who spoke about the use of cloud and IP technologies for their coverage of the Tokyo Olympics, and the other from Peter Van Dam, CEO and founder, AV Consulting, who spoke about partnering with Grass Valley to enable cloud-based remote sports production for leading clients in the Middle East. Expert voices Grass Valley also hosted a panel session moderated by Vijaya Cherian, Editor of BroadcastPro ME, published by CPI Trade Media. She presented the participants with three
Louis Hernandez, Jr, founder, CEO and Managing Director of Black Dragon Capital (BDC).
key questions, reflecting how cloud and IP solutions are frequently best suited for fast-tracking performance in a multiscreen culture, while also recognising the potential hurdles and watersheds.
It doesn’t mean the end of broadcasting as we’ve known it; we’re simply choosing the parts of the AI mix that are of most use. We’re asking which aspects will empower performance across key areas and give us the best returns” Peter Van Dam, CEO and founder, AV Consulting
• What’s the best path to navigate towards a full digital transformation? • Should media companies migrate to cloud, IP or both? • Should media companies adopt private, public or hybrid cloud deployments? In response to the first question, Hasan Sayed Hasan, Managing Director, Master Media, commented: “While many issues come to mind, we fundamentally have to ask: why are we doing it? What’s the benefit of that full digital transformation to the organisation? “Once we can answer that question, the next aspect is leadership. The leadership must be prepared to explain the benefits of the transformation to the whole organisation. Everyone must understand it, and that means departments like Accounts, HR and Distribution, as well as Production. Without everyone onboard, the process simply won’t work. “Training is also crucial here. It’s the key to empowering people across every different level in the business. My experience shows that typically there will be some junior people who will be antagonists, and they will be
Peter Van Dam shares a case study from Saudi Arabia with attendees.
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PROROUNDTABLE
against the transformation, but if you can genuinely explain the reasons behind the changes, they can be brought onboard. So this is really all about ensuring good communication between silos, job descriptions and grades. Everyone has to know what the organisation is doing and why it’s doing it, because – and it’s vital to remember this – every change is also a cultural change. For it to work, to change the culture, everybody has to be aware of what’s happening and buy into that change.” Apart from the efforts required to change, digital transformation offers certain benefits over traditional analogue approaches. These include increased working flexibility and more transparent costs and margins. Peter Van Dam, CEO and founder, AV Consulting, explained: “I can now give an exact figure for what my projects tomorrow will cost me and tell you exactly what my overheads will be. Of course, this has great advantages for costing the service end-to-end and therefore gives me a better commercial edge. Also, I now have much greater freedom about where I choose to work. I’m no longer bound by any of the old constraints, and nor are the teams
Louis Hernandez, Jr kickstarted the discussion with a brief introduction about BDC's interest in Grass Valley.
I need to work and collaborate with. “Of course, it’s important to add that many of the old ways of working will continue for years. It doesn’t mean the
“So many new solutions are now arriving after quite a few years of development, and we should all recognise that the cloud has already happened. It’s not on its way, it’s already here!” Miljenko Logozar, co-founder and CEO, StoryDeck.io
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end of broadcasting as we’ve known it; we’re simply choosing the parts of the AI mix that are of most use. We’re asking which aspects will empower performance across key areas and give us the best returns.” Migrating: Where to and how? Is it best to migrate to cloud, IP or both? Ruba Ibrahim, Director of Operations, Al Arabiya, believes that “while we might want to involve everyone in the decisionmaking process, there’s no doubt that democracy can make things very slow. Sometimes it really hinders the process. Convincing people is very time-consuming; everyone who’s been through the process knows that.” “However, it’s also true that to be effective, the transformation has to be a full 360. If it is, and the word gets to all the teams and all the decision-makers, you can get some good surprises. For example, we thought it would be the younger staff who’d be most interested, but it’s often people in their 50s and 60s who’ve really led with this. They didn’t want to be left behind by the younger members of staff and were determined to challenge them, showing how good they can be when they combine all their experience with the new technology as well. “Of course, there have always been the operational challenges,
PROROUNDTABLE
such as the cost and the availability of the right bandwidths. So you need to ask if making the transition is really worth the cost. Plus, there’s also the human aspect to consider. Some people are afraid that digital transformation will cost them their jobs, but in fact this often isn’t the case. In reality, you just need people to be more creative and inventive, and it’s actually more of a challenge to find a very skilled human resources pool.” Contributing virtually to the debate, Ibrahim Nassar, Manager of Broadcast Engineering, Al Jazeera, seconded this but added that the strategic angle is as important as the cultural angle. “I think we need a mix of approaches – there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. I think it will be a long time before we are always in the cloud, and we have to understand what works best for every skillset and department. For example, we need to understand
all, there are a lot of factors to consider, so it’s critical that any business starts its transformational plan well in advance and plans practically, with a good lead time.”
the needs of editorial, and in fact the needs of all our key stakeholders. “The challenge is not in the technology, it’s in the cultural change that the transition implies, and that needs to be driven from above. This isn’t an overnight process, because in order to start the transformation, you need the full support of the people on the ground. That’s not to mention the cost – after all, even moving to IP is not always a cheap solution. All in
Public, private or hybrid cloud? What about the third question? As to whether companies should opt for private, public or hybrid cloud deployments, Miljenko Logozar, co-founder and CEO, StoryDeck.io, argued: “It’s really time that things like post-production and playout were moved to the cloud. So many new solutions are now arriving after quite a few years of development, and we should all recognise that the cloud has already happened. It’s not on its way, it’s already here! “The fact is, we’ve all been busy doing our own things, and we didn’t notice what’s been happening in areas like content development. In the time that it took for many of us to discuss what to do next, many
Above, Miljenko Logozar and Ibrahim Nassar join the discussion virtually from Qatar; below, Tim Banks, VP of Sales for EMEA, GV, addresses the gathering.
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startups have already acquired half a billion users. All of these things have already happened, and if we don’t accept them here in broadcast, well, the internet definitely can.” For Israel Esteban, Chief Technology Officer at beIN Media Group, “It all depends on timing and your situation – in other words, it depends on your needs at that moment. You can only really make the transition when it makes sense to do so. For instance, for two to three years we were not in the cloud, but at that time I didn’t feel we were missing anything. There simply isn’t a right or wrong answer, only what’s right or wrong for you.” Apart from cost and the impact on organisational culture, Nabil El Madbek, Technology Projects
“Digital transformation is full of surprises. We thought it would be the younger staff who’d be most interested, but it’s people in their 50s and 60s who’ve really led with this” Ruba Ibrahim, Director of Operations, Al Arabiya Manager, Abu Dhabi Media, remarked that it’s “all about the workflows, and this can be a big challenge. We have to accept that sometimes we need a very specific focus, because one of the most practical and effective ways we can use this technology is by introducing new
ways of handling production. If we ignore that, we are neglecting one of the principal benefits that the new technology can bring.” Future thinking It was clear from the panel session that as cloud adoption gathers pace, the debate around the role of AI and digital transformation is increasingly relevant. Grass Valley’s role is evolving as a leading presence driving the industry’s realignment and commitment to digital transition. This was well emphasised by Sydney Lovely, Chief Technology Officer, Grass Valley, who described the Grass Valley Media Universe as “a connected ecosystem for elastic media production and distribution”. PRO
Left: Ruba Ibrahim from Al Arabiya; right, Jan Lange, Grass Valley's Chief Revenue Officer, with MENA attendees.
Mohammad Saifi and Jean Claude Rahme from Abu Dhabi Media on the left, and Hasan Sayed Hasan from Master Media and Peter Van Dam from AV Consulting on the right.
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PROGUEST
“It goes without saying that the pandemic has played a major role in accelerating the efforts of all sorts of companies towards digitisation”
Changing production needs in the MENA market The timely launch of the New Media Academy by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum last year represents not only the sort of ingenious forward thinking that defines the leadership of the UAE, but also reflects the exciting new trends that we have been observing in the market as a leading supplier in the MENA region. We have witnessed a departure from traditional modes of production, broadcast and marketing in recent years, especially in non-production companies and streaming platforms, who despite their many differences are affected by this new era of content creation. Content creation has revolutionised and revitalised marketing across all companies, regardless of field or background. On one side, we see the sort of digital content that is being specifically created and curated by companies for said companies on social media platforms, and on the other end of the spectrum we see traditional broadcasting stations adapting to these changes by moving their services online and mass producing content that appeals to the traditional TV viewer. This is where we see tremendous change in our customer portfolio. Where we once used to supply to a niche group of customers, meaning traditional production houses that provided a variety of services to regular companies, now we have a wide range of new customers from companies such as Spinneys, Sephora, DAMAC and even Emirates Bank and
BMW. Not long ago, these companies became aware of the importance and necessity of social media platforms as a marketing tool. Originally, they began relying on third-party specialised media companies to strategise and oversee their digital networks. However, especially in the past two years, it has recently become clear that they need to establish in-house media departments that can handle their marketing needs. These companies are now investing in multifunctional, cost-effective products that can generate both photo and video at the same time. It is truly an exciting and defining moment in our lives as suppliers and trainers. Our most sellable and attractive products – camera, light, sound, tripods and all related accessories – are the ones that can serve multipurpose for marketing. Naturally, we have shifted our focus to supplying products and providing the necessary training that can secure these services for our growing clients. Meanwhile, the increasing reliance of these companies on in-house marketing means that traditional broadcasting stations are losing advertisements. If companies are able to use their digital social media platforms to advertise their products in a manner that best suits them without having to pay a fee to broadcasting stations, then of course there is no doubt that they would opt for the former. Not only have broadcasting stations been losing advertisements but they have also been losing their
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audience, as traditional TV viewership has been continuously declining and increasingly moving online. This is where we start to lose traditional broadcasters such as Dubai TV and Abu Dhabi TV as regular clients. However, the great news is that as the proliferation of streaming platforms and OTTs flock people back to their televisions again, broadcasting stations are presented with an exciting new opportunity to adapt and reform by producing content that guarantees loyalty and viewership. For instance, ADtv, Abu Dhabi Media’s video-ondemand platform, has gained a solid reputation and a dedicated growing audience in the region. The same can be said about MBC Shahid, which has established itself as the leading Arabic streaming service. This shift in viewership habits has of course reignited the energy and potential of production houses to create engaging content that capitalises on this momentum to maintain and grow their audiences. This means revitalising the traditional drama soaps or creating new competition programmes that have thankfully brought the industry back. This is the future, and this is where everyone is investing their focus and energy. It goes without saying that the pandemic has played a major role in accelerating the efforts of all sorts of companies towards digitisation, but that is certainly a topic we can discuss separately. Alaa Al Rantisi is Managing Director of Advanced Media.