TV Middle East and Africa MIPTV 2010

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Sales Strategies Buying Trends

MIPTV EDITION

twofour54’s Wayne Borg THE MAGAZINE OF MIDDLE EASTERN & AFRICAN TV

APRIL 2010

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Mondo TV IN THIS ISSUE

www.mondotv.it

An Oasis of Opportunities

• Puppy in My Pocket • Angel’s Friends:The Secret World Around You • Virus Attack • Farhat, Prince of the Desert • Kim

Having recently attended DISCOP Africa, Mondo TV has been expanding its client base on the continent.“We met so many new buyers coming from small and big countries in Africa, from the French-speaking to the English- and Portuguese-speaking African countries,” says Matteo Corradi, the COO and head of sales. Back for a second season is Farhat, Prince of the Desert. Kim follows the adventures of a young boy in India in search of his own origin, painting a portrait of a country rich in contrasts, religions and customs. Virus Attack is a 2-D show for children 7 to 13.

Another 2-D series, with CG effects, Angel’s Friends:The Secret World Around You also has a feature film in production. Based on the pocket-sized collectable pets by MEG Toys U.S., Puppy in My Pocket is a further 2D-animated series that uses CG.

Virus Attack

Distributors discuss their sales strategies

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Continental Shift A survey of buyers

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Interviews twofour54’s Wayne Borg

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Ricardo Seguin Guise

Publisher Anna Carugati

Group Editorial Director

“[A range of Mondo TV’s] series and stories appeal to children in the African and Middle East regions.

”

—Matteo Corradi

Mansha Daswani

Editor Kristin Brzoznowski

Managing Editor Lauren M. Uda

Production and Design Director Simon Weaver

Online Director Phyllis Q. Busell

Art Director Tatiana Rozza

Telefe International

Sales and Marketing Director

www.telefeinternational.com

Sales and Marketing Manager

Kelly Quiroz

• WAGs, Love for the Game • Just in Time • Legacy of Passion • Everybody Against Juan • South African Documentaries

Telefe International has already made inroads into both the Middle East and Africa.Telefe recently participated in DISCOP Africa for a second time, and Michelle Wasserman, the head of international distribution, programming, formats and production services, is excited to see what comes out of the company’s presence at the event in Dakar. “We have just closed our first formats [deal] in the continent for Morocco, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya...and we have closed significant deals in Mozambique, Angola and Cabo Verde.”Telefe will be looking to continue its sales momentum in both regions with titles such as WAGs, Love for the Game, Just in Time, Legacy of Passion and Everybody Against Juan. Telefe also has more than 80 hours of full HD footage, highlighting all there is to know about South Africa.

Rae Matthew

Business Affairs Manager Cesar Suero

Sales and Marketing Coordinator

Ricardo Seguin Guise

President Anna Carugati

Everybody Against Juan

Executive VP and Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani

“ We are already producing our first show in the Middle East. We are very happy with our achievements.

”

—Michelle Wasserman

VP of Strategic Development TV Middle East & Africa © 2010 WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, #1207 New York, NY 10010 Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940

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Televisa Networks www.televisanetworks.tv • Canal de las Estrellas • tlnovelas • Ritmoson Latino • Telehit • Clásico TV

Televisa Networks distributes two channels in Africa that are in Spanish and Portuguese. In Angola and Mozambique, the offer consists of seven channels, including TLN, Canal de las Estrellas, tlnovelas and Ritmoson Latino. For Guinea, Cameroon and Gabon its offers include Canal de las Estrellas, tlnovelas, Ritmoson Latino and De Película, along with the recently launched TLN in Portuguese.“We see a perfect fit in content, culture and demographics in Africa,” says Fernando Muñiz Bethancourt, the general manager.“Not only does it have a large Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking community, it’s a young population.”

Televisa Networks can offer this young audience soap operas, music and a range of “young, daring, innovative and irreverent programming.” Regarding the Middle East, Bethancourt says that Televisa Networks is “exploring several opportunities and looking forward to launching the channels there in the near future.”

“Africa represents a great greenfield market. It is a large market, which, with the right product, can bring unlimited opportunities.

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—Fernando Muñiz Bethancourt

La estación on Ritmoson

Venevision International www.venevisioninternational.com • Always on My Mind • Yearning for Your Love • Sweetest Essence • I Will Never Say Good-bye • Millionaire Maid

Millionaire Maid

Venevision International is showcasing an assortment of telenovelas to African and Middle Eastern buyers, among them Always on My Mind.The series focuses on a woman who has spent 20 years waiting to avenge an unforgivable wrong. Yearning for Your Love, meanwhile, tells the story of best friends who become fierce rivals.

In Sweetest Essence, with Ana Karina Manco and Miguel de Leon, a betrayal and a family’s financial strife lead to romance. Gledys Ibarra and Carlos Montilla star in Millionaire Maid, in which a woman continues to work as a maid even though she has become wealthy overnight. Other novela titles available from the company include I Will Never Say Good-bye, Rebeca and The Revenge.Venevision International is also highlighting its Platinum Documentary Series, consisting of 11 45-minute specials. They include China Through the Yangtze River and Guests of War.

Sweetest Essence

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P A N O R A M A

By Mansha Daswani

Race to the Finish Line Anyone questioning the Middle East’s status as the “it” emerging market of the moment need only look at the attendee list of the inaugural Abu Dhabi Media Summit last month.

Those that converged on the United Arab Emirates’ capital included News Corporation’s chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch; Publicis Group’s chairman, Maurice Lévy; Bertelsmann’s chairman and CEO, Hartmut Ostrowski; and Warner Bros. Entertainment’s chairman and CEO, Barry Meyer.

Companies are eager to secure a foothold before overcrowding takes place in the Mideast media market, which is set to experience growth rates of between 12 percent and 15 percent per annum over the next few years. News Corp. has been among the early movers—it recently picked up a 9-percent stake in Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Rotana Group, while its Fox International Channels division is collaborating with twofour54 on a number of initiatives. “When we look to the future, News Corporation is betting on the creative potential of the more than 335 million people who make up the Arab world,” Murdoch said during his keynote address at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit.

But Murdoch is keen to avoid some of the pitfalls he experienced in a former “it” market, China, and he encouraged delegates at the summit to foster an environment in the region’s media industry that promotes openness. “Creative protectionism is as destructive as other types of protectionism. It is expensive, it is unfair, and it guarantees that local companies coddled by protection will never be strong enough to compete outside their own borders,” he said.

He went on make a point about censorship and the need for unfettered media markets. “In the face of an inconvenient story, it can be tempting to resort to censorship or civil or criminal laws to try to bury it. In the long run, this is counterproductive. Markets that distort their media end up promoting the very panic and distrust that they had hoped to control.”

While Middle Eastern producers are working to boost their own content-creation capabilities, the region’s broadcasters are still looking outside their borders for programming, as are the networks in Africa, another region that has come under the spotlight recently. With a new pay-TV platform, On Digital Media (ODM), launching in

South Africa, and an influx of advertising revenues expected from this June’s World Cup, there are a host of emerging opportunities for global channel brands and distributors. According to Patrick Jucaud, the general manager of DISCOP, which held its third African market in February, these territories are being “fueled by the joint effects of the rapid growth of digital television services, the proximity of the FIFA 2010 World Cup in South Africa, 300 million mobile users, and the first undersea fiber-optic cable in East Africa, marking the beginning of an era of faster and cheaper broadband connections.”

Jucaud notes, “With close to 35 million TV households, 3 million payTV subscribers, [and] four main languages—English, French, Portuguese and Swahili—sub-Saharan Africa offers unique opportunities for suppliers of finished programs, formats and packaged thematic channels.”

DISCOP is so bullish about Africa that it is hosting DISCOP Africa 4 this September. And next year, the organization that cut its teeth on fostering business in Central and Eastern Europe is launching a television market in Istanbul targeting buyers from the Middle East and North Africa.

To be sure, there are huge challenges across these two regions, from political instability to murky regulatory frameworks. But as growth slows in more developed international markets, the potential of the Middle East and Africa will undoubtedly prove too great to ignore. However, unlike the international expansion plans of companies just a few years ago, the model today stresses collaboration—as opposed to a one-way sales deal.“Your citizens should be free to take full advantage of human creativity wherever they find it,” Murdoch said in Abu Dhabi.“But they also deserve the opportunity to add their own creative contributions to our vast and growing media world.”

As growth slows in more developed

international markets, the potential of

the Middle East and Africa will undoubtedly prove too great to ignore.

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By Bob Jenkins

Over the past two years, much of the developed world’s broadcasting business has been coping with the worst economic downturn since the 1930s and a technological revolution that is changing viewing habits and altering traditional business models. In other parts of the world, however, broadcasting has remained a healthy and growing business—and not just in China and India.

In fact, Africa and the Middle East are two bright spots in the international landscape. Although the markets are still developing, and prices for an hour of programming range from a high of $2,500 to as little as $200, distributors are finding plenty of new sales opportunities, thanks in particular to the proliferation of channels.

It’s not surprising that in these regions,which boast a number of strong national football teams and are gearing up for World Cup fever, sports events and programming are particularly popular.

What may come as more of a surprise is the other genre that is a huge hit across Africa and the Middle East. “Telenovelas are massively popular, and have been for at least five years now,” says Ricardo Ehrsam, the general director for Europe,Asia and Africa at Mexico’s Televisa Internacional. In fact, telenovelas are so popular in the region that they’re the only product Ehrsam brought to DISCOP Africa, which was held in Dakar, Senegal, in February.

As he explains,telenovelas are a very good genre in tough economic times because they have so many episodes, allowing the cost of acquisition to be spread over a long run.Also,once hooked by a telenovela, audiences become very loyal very quickly.

Raphael Corrêa Netto, the head of international sales at Globo TV International, agrees that telenovelas are by far the most popular television genre in both the Middle East and Africa. India:A Love Story, the winner of the 2009 International Emmy for Best Telenovela, not only has a fixed prime-time slot on Israel’s Viva channel,“it has already been licensed to over 40 countries in Africa, and we have made sales of telenovelas to 50 of the continent’s 53 countries,” according to Corrêa Netto. He is, however, keen to point out that “we have a very diversified catalogue,including series,mini-series,formats,specials and documentaries, and all are increasingly selling well.”

Jamie Lynn, the VP of sales for the Middle East, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, South Africa and Africa at FremantleMedia Enterprises, also sees a lot more going on in Africa than telenovelas or sports.“In Africa there is an almost insatiable appetite for big formats, especially in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana,” he says. “The buyers for these formats are not necessarily the broadcasters, though; we work with a number of third parties to secure sponsor-led deals, enabling us to deliver a complete finished package to the broadcaster.”

An Oasis of

Opportunities In regions as diverse as the Middle East and Africa, distributors are finding that telenovelas, sports and family entertainment are among the most popular genres.

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Eric Muller, the VP of international sales at Power, has also found that “almost everything sells in Africa, so long as it is family programming; you do have to be careful with content, but, that said, male-skewing action, female-skewing romance, soaps, documentaries, all are selling well.”

Muller points out that English-speaking Africa is an easier market,“firstly because the stations there tend to have a much clearer idea of the audiences they are after and also because, in Francophone Africa, you have to supply the dub; no broadcaster will even consider a program without a French dub, so that’s a risk someone has to take for this region before a sale has been made.”

Muller’s colleague George Sakkalli, Power’s VP of Asian sales and distribution, thinks that much the same sort of programming has a great appeal in the Middle East as well. “We sell mainly action and family titles,” he reports, adding,“anything with sex is tricky.”

But there are differences between the Middle East and subSaharan Africa, the main one being the dominance in the Middle East of pan-regional satellite platforms.“The competition between them is fierce, and while there is an ever-growing appetite for Western product in the region, there is also growing demand for local holdbacks,” says Sakkalli.

CHANGING LANDSCAPE

“The dominance of pan-regional platforms in the Middle East makes it difficult to pick out local variations in the market,” says Ziad Kebbi, the managing director of Endemol Middle East, although he does point to Lebanon and Egypt as two exceptions. Most Lebanese-owned broadcasters that rely on advertising have opted for smaller shows, much more tightly focused on the local market,” he explains.“Egypt, on the other hand, has witnessed a surge in demand for TV shows and formats following the launch of several privately owned chan-

Built to last: Endemol Worldwide Distribution has sold Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, among other titles, in the region.

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nels over the past few years. Formats and especially game shows, such as Endemol’s 1 vs 100 and Star Academy, are crowd pleasers on both sides of the equation—the audiences love them and so do the broadcasters.”

Another distributor who has noticed variations in the region is Bernard Azria, the founder and managing director of Côte Ouest, the largest independent distributor in Africa. Azria reports,“In Sub-Saharan Africa, prices per hour are currently falling and there are a number of reasons for this.The first is that over the past few years there has been an incredible explosion of channels.” By comparison, Azria recalls,“15 years ago Francophone Africa, which consists of some 20 countries, only had one government-run station per country. Now the region has about 100 stations, and so the result of this competition is that the price per hour has come down.”

Second, Azria says, the region suffered from the economic downturn, though it has not been hit as hard as elsewhere, and third, the West has overproduced,“so there is far more product from which to choose these days.Eight years ago,”he recalls,“there was only one station in Senegal;now there are five.This means that although the price per hour has halved as a result of the competition, I can sell many more hours, and so I am making much more money from Senegal than I did eight years ago when there was only one station.”

Of the French-speaking North African markets of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, by far the most advanced is Morocco, which is the only one of these territories to have proper audience measurement provided by Mediametrie.“But, in the past 18 months or so, the advertising market in Morocco has fallen around 20 percent,” Azria says.“Algeria is virtually a closed market, and has only one government-run station. And, while Tunisia is opening up, it is doing so very slowly.”

One of the key trends noted by Azria is the move to local production right across all territories in which he is active.

Local production of comedy formats is one of the opportunities currently being investigated by MTV Networks International, as its director of program sales, Helen Curtis, explains. “The Comedy Central catalogue sells well to the pay platforms in both the Middle East and Africa. However, interest from terrestrial broadcasters has been slower due to a lack of comedy slots, and to the fact that humor is lost in translation,” she says.“We are currently exploring the possibility of selling terrestrial formats to our hit comedy shows.And, of World Screen

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A time for romance: Televisa has been selling its telenovelas, such as Mar de amor, in Africa and the Middle East for years.

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A tradition of success: Globo has licensed novelas, including the new series India: A Love Story, across Africa.

course, last year we had great success at DISCOP Africa with content from our BET [Black Entertainment Television] catalogue, and, as new platforms continue to open up in the Middle East and Africa, such as On Digital Media in South Africa, we plan to start selling content from our Spike and CMT [Country Music Television] catalogues, which contain programming well suited to, respectively, male- and female-skewing channels.” And, of course, with the Nickelodeon product, Curtis reports strong sales of kids’ programming.

REGIONAL APPETITE

is pirated. Often, when you go to court over copyright theft, it is clear that the judge does not really understand the concept of intellectual property. I have had instances in which judges have been unable to differentiate between copyright and trademark registration.”

During a round-table discussion on piracy at DISCOP Africa, a movement was launched under the aegis of a French antipiracy organization called ALPA, along with Côte Ouest, CanalSat Horizons, A.P.P.T.A.—a body representing the interests of independent producers and private broadcasters across the continent—M-Net, Eutelsat and others, to establish an organization that will fight piracy on the continent. It is early days, and it will be some time before this body actually exists, but in recognition of the problems of obtaining legal redress, a decision was taken in principal to act against pirates by: a) requiring all members of the organization to cease all trade with a pirate and b) to place advertisements and/or articles in the national newspapers of any country concerned, naming and shaming a culprit.

But the other big question is, of course, if stations do want your content and are prepared to pay for it, how much can you expect? Well, as with every region of the world, this is a matter of negotiation, and is dependent upon many variables, such as the size and content of the package, the length of the license, the nature of any additional rights granted, and so on.

Russell Southwood, the CEO of the research, consultancy and publishing house Balancing Act, which specializes in Africa’s communications and audiovisual businesses, estimates that prices range between $1,000 to $2,500 per hour for “premium” content, $300 to $500 per hour for “standard” content and $200 to $250 per hour for “low-profile” content.

As with any market, there can be dramatic exceptions.

Southwood reports that the English Premier League recently commanded a price tag of $28 million in Nigeria, while the Africa Cup of Nations got $4.38 million.

Of course, soccer is a very special case in sub-Saharan Africa, but as FremantleMedia’s Lynn says, “any IP owner who ignores the absolute vitality of these rapidly developing regions will be doing so at their peril.”

Claire Jago, the sales director for the Middle East and Africa at Endemol Worldwide Distribution, cites kids’ programming as a strong-selling genre in the Middle East, along with “English-speaking drama and factual, which are acquired by both the pan-regional networks and government stations alike.” She reports a different programming taste for the African pan-regional operators who, she says, “have a big appetite for teen youth programming and also for U.S. reality. Factual and non-U.S. drama are harder to place with these platforms.”

Micheline Azoury, the international sales manager for the Middle East and Africa at the Italian kids’ specialist Mondo TV, sees strong potential for upping its animation business in the Middle East now that a number of “niche kids’ channels have recently opened up.” In common with almost everyone else, she names telenovelas and sports as the most popular genres in both regions.“In the Middle East it was always Latin American telenovelas that were the most popular,” she notes,“but recently there has been an increasing move to telenovelas from Turkey.”

Of course, it cannot be denied that, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the question for content owners is not just what stations want, but how to stop them from stealing what they want.

Piracy is a major problem. In fact, Côte Ouest’s Azria estimates that “in some of the worst countries for piracy, such as Congo and Mada- Raising the bar: Guiding Light is a daytime soap that Power is rolling out gascar, over 95 percent of programming aired across the African and Middle Eastern territories.

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Continental Shift A broad group of buyers from the Middle East and Africa reveal what’s on their shopping lists.

By Kristin Brzoznowski Broadcasters from across the Middle East and Africa have been stocking their shelves with a variety of genres. From currentaffairs programs to movies, drama, entertainment and lifestyle, the schedules of the major players in these regions are being filled with content acquired from across the globe.

As a public broadcaster, SABC 2 of South Africa delivers a full range of programming, including news, factual, children’s, sports and entertainment.“We call ourselves the Channel for the Nation, as we broadcast in seven languages and carry the largest local public-service broadcasting mandate in South Africa,” says Bessie Tugwana, the channel’s general manager.

The channel targets an audience—with an average age of 35—that rates between 5 and 7 on the living-standard measure used in South Africa to identify demographics, with 1 being the lowest standard of living and 10 being the highest.

Around 85 percent of SABC 2’s prime-time grid is made up of local content, and “70 percent of prime time must be delivered in languages other than English as per our mandate from the regulator,”Tugwana explains. Some of the most recent additions to the schedule have been local commissions, with titles such Shoreline and SA’s Got Talent.Tugwana notes that in the overall grid, entertainment formats have been some of the top performers; she points to Strictly Come Dancing and Got Talent.

As for her buying remit,Tugwana says,“We are looking for cost-effective entertainment properties for Saturday prime time as well as quality content from and about the continent of Africa.” She adds,“We are open to advertiser-funded content.”

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with a bit of reality mixed in, according to Elana Closenberg, the head of acquisitions for the two channels. The Home Channel draws a predominantly female audience in the 35plus range, but Closenberg says that there is a definite male presence among viewers. Ignition’s audience is predominantly male, mostly in the 24-plus group, but attracts females as well.

Viewers of both channels are particularly keen on British programming.“We are always on the lookout for top-quality gardening, design, décor, do-it-yourself, home improvement and property series for The Home Channel, and motoring shows for Ignition,” says Closenberg. This has led to the recent pickups of Holmes Inspection, World’s Greenest Homes, The Decorating Adventures of Ambrose Price, Carbon Black Millionaire’s Club and Auto Mundial.

HOME AND AWAY

“The majority of our shows are acquired from international distributors,” Closenberg notes.“However, this year our internal production division is producing five local shows for The Home Channel, and Ignition produces a weekly magazine series.”

Acquired product that is performing well includes shows centered on strong personalities who are experts in their fields.

“All the Debbie Travis shows have been an amazing success.”

(Travis is a host of home-decorating and improvement shows.)

“Debbie has been a presence on the channel since launch. Mike Holmes has also been a great hit, and we look forward to the South African launch of his new series, Holmes Inspection.”

Lifestyle also has its place in the schedule of Viasat 1 of Ghana.

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Over in Morocco, 2M has a similar programming remit. A free-to-air broadcaster, 2M carries a wide variety of programs, including news, dramas and talk shows, and is suitable for all members of a family.The Arabic-language channel also boasts a lineup of series for kids and a roster of sporting events.

The channel’s program manager, Zouhair Zrioui, says the schedule is broken down about fifty-fifty between local productions or commissions and content acquired from the international market. Recent pickups include India: A Love Story, which won the International Emmy Award for best telenovela in 2009, as well as the latest season of the hit crime drama CSI. Zrioui says he is looking across all categories for new acquisitions, and is particularly keen to pick up some more fiction programming that can be dubbed.

DOCS ON CALL

Holding pattern: Among the recent acquisitions for Viasat 1 of Ghana is Sueño con tu amor, from Venevision International.

bringing the best football”—UEFA Champions League and English Premier League—“U.S. and African movies, dramas, entertainment and lifestyle programs to viewers all over the country,” explains programming director Chris Lumb.

Viasat 1 has a broad target of 15 to 49, with a primary focus on the 15-to-34 set. Lumb says he’s seeking out strong Englishlanguage African movies, drama and entertainment shows with high production values to serve this audience. He notes that the majority of the programming on Viasat 1 comes from international distributors, and is often picked up on an exclusive basis for Ghana.“We are in the process of considering several projects in Ghana and plan for the amount of locally produced programming to increase substantially in the medium term.”

Lumb is looking to the international market to fill a number of slots on the channel. “We require Ghanaian TV premiere programming about subjects that appeal to Ghanaians, with excellent production values.” He also says new Englishlanguage African movies and series are on his shopping list.

Al Jazeera Documentary Channel has a more specific buying mandate.The network,available across the Middle East and North Africa in Arabic, delivers factual programming that touches on issues of human rights as well as social, religious and spiritual topics.There’s also programming focused on nature and the environment, looking at wildlife, geography and water issues. Politics and current affairs are on the slate,touching on topics concerning economics, business and energy. The rest of the schedule is rounded out with programming that varies from travel, culture, food and art, to history, biography, science and technology.

Ahmed Mahfouz, the director of Al Jazeera Documentary Channel, says that for 2009, in-house production amounted to 200 hours, while acquisitions were 700 hours. He says that the channel’s goal for 2010 is to reach 300 hours for original productions and 1,500 hours of acquired content.At MIPTV, Mahfouz and his team will be looking for programming that features food, along with lifestyle and travel documentaries that focus on the Far East.

The consensus is that there’s room for a variety of different programming on the screens in the Middle East and Africa, which is sure to be good news for all distributors that are working to expand their reach.

IN THE MIX

“The channel strategy of having a broad mix of U.S. and strong African content has worked very well,” Lumb notes.

“We have long-running deals with several U.S. studios and African distributors that have enabled us to acquire large amounts of very strong programming.”

Acquisitions from U.S. studios such as Universal Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox are among the recent pickups for Nigeria’s Hi Mix.The channel’s content manager, Akinade Olafusi, points to features and series from Warner Bros. as some of the most successful programming on the slate.

Hi Mix, which targets the 15-to-40 age group, features a broad range of genres, from hit dramas and sitcoms to blockbuster movies, talk shows, specials and lifestyle programming.

The general-entertainment channel looks to the international market as its main source for content, Olafusi notes. He says what’s still needed is more features, comedies, talk shows, sitcoms and telenovelas. Specifically, Olafusi is looking for movies made in 2006 and later, along with short clips or interstitial content and mini-series.

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Under investigation: Parthenon’s The Real NCIS was acquired by Al Jazeera Documentary Channel.

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Named after the geographical coordinates of Abu Dhabi, twofour54 has set out to foster the development of world-class Arabic media and entertainment, by Arabs and for Arabs. As Wayne Borg, twofour54’s COO, explains, the company’s aim is to position Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, as a regional centre of excellence in creating content across all media platforms.

A Bridge Between Two Worlds

twofour54’s Wayne Borg

By Anna Carugati

TV MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: What does the Arab world have to offer the international media industry?

BORG: The Arab world provides enormous opportunity for the local, regional and international media industry. The Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region stretches from Morocco in the west to Oman in the east and is home to more than 340 million people, 60 percent of whom are under the age of 25, all bound by a common language.That is a marketplace bigger than the U.S. with a relatively underdeveloped media industry, especially in newer platform segments like digital gaming, mobile and animation.Twofour54 is acting as a bridge to this region by facilitating access to the marketplace for the world’s media industry.We are doing this by putting the physical and intellectual infrastructure in place to allow companies to create content for this market, effectively Arabic content, created by Arabs in the heart of the Arab world.

We have recognized the need to build and develop an Arab talent pool and increase the skills and numbers of the local workforce—this is what our training academy, twofour54 tadreeb, was designed for.The academy offers short, intensive courses aimed at [updating and teaching new skills to] media professionals and students via vocational training courses, which encompasses the full range of media disciplines.

As this talent pool grows, young entrepreneurs and fledgling media businesses will need financial help and support.

Twofour54 ibtikar is specifically designed to support, encourage and invest in individuals and businesses from the region with ideas to help turn their concept into content.

In a final step to help take a creative concept to market, twofour54 intaj offers state-of-the-art production and post-production facilities, including five full HD studios and 22 post-production suites for video editing, audio, graphics and high-end finishing.These business pillars are supported by twofour54 tawasol, which provides a one-stop shop to facilitate the establishment of businesses, whether they are expanding or establishing a presence in Abu Dhabi.

TV MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: Partnerships seem to be of key importance to twofour54.What have been some of the most important ones so far?

BORG: [More than 60 partners have] recognized the opportunity the MENA region and Abu Dhabi present and have committed significant investment to establishing operations at twofour54. All of these partners add value to the ecosystem and are playing a part in establishing the foundations of the industry we are building.

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In the last quarter of 2009, CNN launched their new production and news-gathering center for the Middle East, only the fourth such hub globally. Twofour54 is now home to CNN’s first daily live news show from the region, PRISM. We also announced a collaboration with MTV Networks International to launch Comedy Central Studios Arabia.This is a great example of twofour54’s long-term mission to build an Arabic comedy industry for the region through the identification and development of Arab comedians and the production of comedy content in Arabic, whether stand-up, sitcom or sketch shows.

TV MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: You’re also investing in content.

BORG: We have made a strategic investment in Driver Dan’s

Story Train. [This] was the first partnership signed by twofour54 ibtikar, in early 2009. It’s an agreement with 3Line Media of the U.K. It is a fun and educational, bilingual animation and liveaction children’s TV series developed to introduce preschool age children to the delights of storytelling and reading books.

The English version of the show debuted on CBeebies in January 2010. It has been a resounding success with rave reviews across the U.K. media as well as being among the top ten downloads on BBC iPlayer.A number of international broadcasters are currently in discussions with twofour54 regarding the acquisition of rights.

The Arabic version of the show, which is currently being produced at the twofour54 intaj production and post-production facilities, has been created specifically for the Arab world and features animation relative to the region and live-action footage of locally cast children responding and play-acting to the story. Regional broadcasters have responded positively to the initial pilot episode, with the Arabic version scheduled for completion and ready for broadcast before the end of the year.

We recently announced a deal with Macmillan Children’s Books to create a range of Driver Dan’s Story Train books in Arabic and English.This partnership opens up tremendous opportunities for the Arabic publishing industry, as it will enable Arabic publishers and artists to work with one of the biggest names in international publishing on an exciting series of books.

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