BroadcastPro ME December 2019

ISSUE 114 | DECEMBER 2019

Licensed by Dubai Development Authority

THE GOLD

MEDALLISTS Honouring the trailblazers in TV, film, radio and OTT at the 2019 ASBU BroadcastPro Awards

BroadcastProMEAwards.com

Thank you to all our Attendees, Speakers and Sponsors

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BroadcastPro ME Summit & Awards is our annual flagship event to promote and celebrate excellence in the broadcast and satellite industry across the MENA region. Featuring extensive networking opportunities, seminars and awards presentations by key industry and government leaders.

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ORGANISED BY

PROINTRO

GROUP Managing Director Raz Islam raz.islam@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 375 5471 Editorial Director Vijaya Cherian vijaya.cherian@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 4 375 5472 EDITORIAL Editor Vijaya Cherian

Welcome

vijaya.cherian@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 55 105 3787 Assistant Editor Shifa Naseer shifa.naseer@cpitrademedia.com +971 (4) 375 5478 Contributing Editor Paul Godfrey Sub Editor Aelred Doyle ADVERTISING Group Sales Director Sandip Virk sandip.virk@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0) 50 929 1845 +44 (0) 773 444 2526 DESIGN Art Director Simon Cobon Designer Percival Manalaysay MARKETING Marketing Manager Sheena Sapsford sheena.sapsford@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0)4 375 5498 CIRCULATION & PRODUCTION Production Manager Vipin V. Vijay vipin.vijay@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0)4 375 5713 Distribution Manager Phinson Mathew George phinson.george@cpitrademedia.com +971 (0)4 375 5476 DIGITAL SERVICES Abdul Baeis Sadiq Siddiqui FOUNDER Dominic De Sousa (1959-2015)

Another year has gone, and alongside celebrating a new generation of path-breakers at our awards and offering a fantastic networking opportunity, it gives me immense satisfaction to see that the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit and Awards has indeed become a central platform for MENA market leaders to reveal strategic industry news while also boldly tackling challenging questions in a public forum.

This year, we heard news that could potentially change the game for sports rights and broadcast in the region, though we are curious about how it will pan out in the current scenario.

One CEO hinted that a sports platform is in the making in Saudi Arabia, with the intention of catering specifically to the entertainment needs of Saudi audiences, and that an announcement is likely within the next couple of months.

One wonders if this will be restricted to sports, or if the Kingdom has plans to launch an entire pay-TV platform for Saudi Arabia. After all, KSA makes up 60% of the GCC TV viewership and the country drives advertising.

It may be true that at present the MENA broadcast rights to many of the world’s leading sporting events rest with beIN Sports Group, and that studio contracts for other entertainment

assets lie with different pay-TV players in the region, but a time will come for renewal, and perhaps Saudi Arabia is biding its time. In the meantime, the Kingdom is raising its profile on the world stage by hosting multiple world championships. Boxing, wrestling, Formula E, a $3m tennis tournament and the highest-value horse racing in the world are already on the cards. It may not be long before we hear that Formula One is also coming to the country.

In parallel, we see a lot of fibre roll-outs in Saudi Arabia’s urban areas, and the critical mass for high-speed fibre delivery seems to have been reached. Although this has typically been a DTH-led market and is currently covered under one blanket beam, IP-based content delivery will open up the opportunity for more targeted advertising and viewership.

Could this be the future of content in the MENA region, with each country buying its own individual rights to sports and other entertainment assets?

Will Saudi Arabia set the stage for this? We will know soon enough.

Vijaya Cherian, Editorial Director

Published by ISSUE 114 | DECEMBER 2019

Licensed by Dubai Development Authority

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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

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THE GOLD

MEDALLISTS Honouring the trailblazers in TV, film, radio and OTT at the 2019 ASBU BroadcastPro Awards

The winners of the 2019 ASBU BroadcastPro Awards

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.

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December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 3

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PROCONTENTS

Inside this issue 07 NEWS MBC debuts first Original on Shahid; Twofour54 gets Dolby Vision certification; Bahrain TV deploys Stingray; STARZPLAY and Intigral extend content deal; and more

December 2019 SHAHID ANNOUNCES FIRST ORIGINAL

THE FOCUS IS ON ARABIC CONTENT

18 HOW TO CREATE WORLDCLASS ARABIC CONTENT Content majors explore strategies for creating better content for MENA audiences

22 EXPLORING IP IN MENA

18

07

Tech experts discuss the challenges of migrating to IP and the status quo in the Arab world

EXPLORING IP IN MENA WITH CTO S

CLOUD STREAMLINES EFFICIENCY

26 REVISITING THE

CLOUD JOURNEY Panellists share views on current cloud trends and solutions in the region

30 HOW DOES ESPORTS

22

FARE IN THE MENA REGION? Gaming experts talk about critical elements that will take esports to the next level

26

ESPORTS SUCCESS RESTS ON PRO S

DIVERSITY DRIVES INNOVATION

34 WOMEN IN TV & FILM Senior women executives explore current challenges and the way forward to elevate diversity in the media industry

38 CEOS ON COLLABORATION The market leaders speak about their new strategies and 2020 plans

34

30 CEOS DISCUSS 2020 STRATEGY

THE 2019 BROADCASTPRO AWARDS

42 THE 2019 ACHIEVERS Meet the winners of the 2019 ASBU BroadcastPro Awards

56 REMOTE PRODUCTION Larissa Goerner on how remote production is changing the game in live sport

38

42 December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 5

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PRONEWS

UTURN Group and Webedia join forces to create Arabic media powerhouse Saudi online entertainment network UTURN Group has joined forces with digital media company Webedia to create Arabic media and entertainment powerhouse Webedia Arabia. The joint company now claims to be one of the largest digital networks in Arabic, with 30m followers across social digital platforms, 24m YouTube subscribers and 4m monthly unique visitors on its digital publications.

With almost 70% of the total population online, the Middle East has one of the highest internet penetration rates in the world. In the UAE, social media penetration rates reached 99% in January 2019, the highest global rate. Saudi Arabia’s online audience is also growing, with smartphone penetration at 96%. The merger is a strategic move to capitalise on the digital landscape of the region.

Kaswara Al-Khatib, Chairman of Webedia Arabia and founder of UTURN Group, said: “The success

Kaswara Al-Khatib is founder of UTURN Group.

and growth of UTURN has been very organic due to our philosophy of bringing creative, edgy, relevant and high-quality content to local audiences. This partnership will allow us to take this success and replicate it across the region with a partner that is equally strong in publishing, as well as developing bespoke content for Arab consumers on its channels. Globally renowned for creating insight-driven, culturally relevant content, Webedia Group is the perfect international partner to take

Karim Daoud is CEO of Webedia Arabia.

our business to the next level, and we’re very much looking forward to what’s next.”

With Arabic publishing and social media channels across multiple sectors including fashion & beauty, food, parenting, pop culture and gaming/esports, Webedia Arabia has a wealth of data and insight into what Arab audiences are consuming and how. The 250-strong team of multinational Arabs uses this insight to conceptualise and create engaging, culturally driven content that resonates with local audiences.

“We are all about engaging audiences with passion and connecting brands with their audiences – what better way to do so than by bringing two leading regional players in Arabic content creation and publishing under one roof?” commented Karim Daoud, CEO, Webedia Arabia.

In addition to these brands, in the near future Webedia Arabia will also be launching Millennium Arabia, an Arabic platform focusing on gaming and esports, to further diversify its offering.

As a result of the merger, Webedia Arabia will have a strong presence in the Gulf, with offices across the UAE and KSA. Omar Alabdali will head up operations in the Kingdom as CEO – Saudi Arabia.

Webedia Arabia is part of Webedia Group, a rapidly growing French media and entertainment group with operations in 15 countries including France, the US, Brazil, Germany, the UK, Spain, Turkey, Lebanon and Mexico.

Discovery confirms removal of channels from My-HD platform Discovery has discontinued its service on My-HD, effective November 21, 2019, BroadcastPro ME can reveal. Discovery Science and Animal Planet will not be available on the platform anymore, due to non-payment of fees.

“We have switched off the channels from My-HD with great reluctance.

Removing our awardwinning content from consumers is never something we take lightly,” Amanda Turnbull told BroadcastPro

ME when asked for a comment.

“We have had a contract with My-HD since they launched in the region, and have always supported them. Unfortunately, we feel that this collaborative approach is no longer

being reciprocated.

Therefore, to protect our IP and for the first time in MENA, we have been forced to take this action.”

My-HD has been touted as one of the most affordable MENA pay-TV platforms.

December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 7

PRONEWS

MBC airs Kingdoms of Fire drama series based on Ottoman Empire MBC Group aired a new drama series last month titled Kingdoms of Fire (Mamalik al Nar), based on the Mamluks and the Ottomans. The TV series, produced by Genomedia at a reported cost of $40m, seems to have gone viral since its first broadcast. Filmed in Tunisia and directed by Peter Weber, known for popular films such as Girl with a

Pearl Earring, Hannibal Rising and Emperor, the 15-episode drama series of 60 minutes each is a historical drama set in Egypt, Syria and the Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 16th century.

“It demonstrates the competition between the Mamluks and the Ottomans over the control of the Middle East, through the rise of two main characters –

A still from the Kingdoms of Fire drama series.

Abu Dhabi announces 30% cash rebate for short productions

Istikana founder Samer Abdin joins STARZPLAY Samer Abdin, former CEO of SVOD platform Istikana, has joined STARZPLAY as Chief Product Officer (CPO).

In his new role, Abdin will be responsible for developing the product from a technology point of view and elevating the customer experience.

Abdin was most recently employed as GM at online portal Dubizzle, but is better known for leading Istikana in his role as CEO.

Abu Dhabi Film Commission’s 30% cash rebate, which has attracted a lot of feature films to the UAE capital, is now being extended to companies shooting short-form content such as TV commercials in the Middle East. Express access to the rebate is available on both production and post-production spend.

Besides TV commercials, the rebate is applicable to feature films, TV dramas, documentaries and telemovies shot in Abu Dhabi, as well as post-production, digital content and visual effects (PDV) services for projects shot inside or outside Abu Dhabi. It also applies to travel and accommodation. In the six years since the launch of the rebate, Abu Dhabi has seen significant demand,

8 | www.broadcastprome.com | December 2019

with more than 80 major productions benefiting.

HE Maryam Eid AlMheiri, Vice Chair of twofour54, said: “With more and more people consuming content on their mobiles, shortform productions are in high demand. Thanks to the expertise, innovation and facilities on offer in Abu Dhabi to production companies, they can produce quality shortform content tailored to today’s market with the added benefit of one of the industry’s most generous financial incentives.”

Other advantages of shooting in Abu Dhabi include its 700-plus diverse locations, a talented pool of local media professionals, year-round sun, and twofour54’s award-winning production and postproduction facilities and 300,000sqm backlot.

Tuman Bay II, the last sultan of the Mamluks in Cairo, and Sultan Salim, the first of Istanbul,” according to a note on the Genomedia web site.

The series is one of the largest drama projects in the Arab world this year. Stars in the first episodes include Khaled Al-Nabawi, Mahmoud Nasr, Kinda Hanna, Rashid Assaf and Mona Wassef.

Image Nation’s History of the Emirates premieres Image Nation Abu Dhabi and Atlantic Production’s documentary History of the Emirates was broadcast on all national TV channels last month. The documentary series gives an insight into the history of the UAE, from the earliest human presence in the region to the national union in 1971, and was aired to commemorate the UAE National Day, which falls on December 2. The series uses CGI technology, 360-degree camerawork and archaeological footage to depict the history of the UAE.

Speaker Built in speaker for monitoring audio.

Control Buttons 7 buttons for transport controls, remote and 3D LUT.

LCD Display Shows video, transport controls, audio meters and menus.

Headphone 1/4" audio jack for monitoring audio with headphones.

Cache Optional media cache for fail safe recording.

Transport controls Touchscreen transport controls for easy playback and record.

In and Out Points Set in and out points for performing “tape to tape” style editing.

Audio meters Monitor up to 4 channels using VU or PPM metering.

Playback and Record Select Select which deck you want as a player or a recorder.

Transport controls Traditional broadcast deck transport controls.

Time Display Monitor deck timecode on clear LED display.

Shuttle/Jog Knob Large knob with electronic clutch for jog, shuttle and scrolling recordings.

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PRONEWS

Bahrain TV launches new history channel with Stingray Bahrain's Ministry of Information Affairs (MIA), has elected to deploy Pebble Beach Systems’ Stingray, a compact channel-in-abox solution, for the launch of its new history channel.

A long-time user of Pebble Beach Systems’ Neptune automation system for its main channels, MIA’s single-channel, fully redundant Stingray system has now been on air for a number of weeks.

Commenting on the

Samir Isbaih is VP of Sales for Middle East and APAC, Pebble Beach Systems.

development, Samir Isbaih, VP of Sales for Middle East and APAC, said: “Stingray

seamlessly integrates into Bahrain TV’s existing technical infrastructure, allowing the broadcaster to expand its offering without affecting the current workflow. Stingray also gives them a platform to test new technology on this channel before migrating their existing infrastructure on to their planned stateof-the-art ‘Development of TV Channels Broadcast and Automation System’ implementation platform.”

A Moment wins Best Film at 48-Hour Film Project in Dubai distributor Advanced Media organised the event alongside sponsors Sony Middle East and Movie Magic Screenwriter, supported by The Dubai competition was organised Dubai Film and by distributor Advanced Media.

TV Commission.

The annual 48-hour Film Commenting on his Project, Dubai concluded team Estetico’s win, on November 11 with cinematographer and Estetico winning Best Film director Noel Bassil said for A Moment. Second that while the experience and third place were was amazing, it was difficult bagged by CallTime for to squeeze a job that ideally Elementary Brilliance and takes around two to three North 24 for Red Flag. weeks into two days. “To A Moment will go on to squeeze it into 48 hours, represent Dubai against the challenge itself was all the other city winners amazing because you start around the world at testing yourself and your Filmapalooza 2020. UAE capabilities,” Bassil said.

10 | www.broadcastprome.com | December 2019

Deluxe refinances, announces new CEO Eric Cummins will succeed Deluxe’s current CEO, John Wallace. Cummins’ appointment expands his current role as CFO of Deluxe.

Additionally, after filing for bankruptcy, Deluxe has completed its comprehensive restructuring and shed more than 75% of its debt and obtained $115m in new financing.

Twofour54 post facilities now Dolby Vision certified Twofour54 Abu Dhabi’s post-production facilities are now certified with Dolby Vision technology.

The certification ensures twofour54’s staff are fully trained and the premises are equipped to meet the post-production needs for colour grading and mastering Dolby Vision HDR content.

This technology ensures that the content created in twofour54’s editing suite stays enhanced across the wide variety of media, from TVs to mobiles and laptops. Twofour54 is the first certified Dolby Vision facility in the UAE, aiming to achieve the highest global standard for the content in Abu Dhabi’s media hub.

This content will be fit for release on streaming platforms like Netflix, opening up even more channels for content creators in Abu Dhabi.

“We have seen an increased interest for Dolby Vision due to growing popularity of streaming services in the Middle East, and we are now able to support studios and content creators with leadingedge tools that are deployed at twofour54’s world-class post facility,” said Pankaj Kedia, MD – Emerging Markets, Dolby Laboratories.

PRONEWS

Shoulders clarifies Grass Valley stance Belden’s recent announcement that it is divesting from Grass Valley will not impact broadcast customers in any way, GV President Tim Shoulders said. Shoulders and other GV management will remain in their current roles and lead the company through this period of change.

When asked if the companies will operate independently, given Belden’s announcement that it will immediately begin reporting Grass Valley as a “discontinued operation” on its income statement, Shoulders said Belden and GV have typically kept most customer-facing functions like sales and marketing, R&D and manufacturing operations

Tim Shoulders.

separate in most countries.

“The Middle East is an exception, where Belden and GV have shared the same facility in Dubai, and for the next 12-15 months they will continue to share the same office. As long as we are part of Belden, we will not separate the office and there is no intention to reduce staff. It is in Belden’s best

interest to ensure a seamless transition. The transition will likely last over a year and that allows us to continue to share resources,” he commented.

One of the reasons for the divestiture is the unpredictability of the broadcast business, where customers often move project timelines from one quarter to the next, commented Shoulders, although he was quick to clarify that the GV business is profitable.“The businesses that Belden purchased, like Miranda, SAM and Grass Valley, combined under the Grass Valley brand is today a healthy business and we generate good cash flow.

At the time that Belden made these purchases, though, these

companies were generating more revenue than today, and this is because the broadcast market has been going through a very tough period. Over time, the business will evolve as the market evolves, but the important thing is that this is not a distressed asset. Grass Valley enjoys a big market share in most categories.”

He added that the company is in the process of negotiating with potential investors and “we will be able within a matter of months to announce something”.

He clarified that Belden’s parallel announcement of a broad-based cost reduction programme that is expected to result in $40m of annualised savings does not pertain to GV.

December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 11

PRONEWS

Spike Lee, Kano join MENA region's media celebrities to celebrate content at ON.DXB

Actor Kano urged talent to retain their artisitic integrity.

Dubai Media City, in cooperation with the Dubai Film and TV Commission, put a spotlight on global and regional film, game, video and music last month with the ON.DXB initiative.

The schedule of concerts, keynote talks, live pitches, industry workshops and panel discussions was led by international celebrities, experts and brands, including Oscar-winning filmmaker Spike Lee; internationally-acclaimed grime artist and actor Kano; actor, producer and YouTube sensation Liza Koshy; and regional gaming icon Mjrm Games.

Kano urged regional film and music talent to retain their artistic integrity and build an authentic body of work if they wanted career longevity. Regional musicians trying to expand beyond the MENA region were urged to consider their own background

Filmmaker Spike Lee advised attendees to tell their own stories.

stories as valuable tools in capturing the attention of global fans and media.

Spike Lee weighed in on the debate about streaming services and their impact on the film industry. “I think Netflix, Hulu and Amazon are great, especially for young filmmakers. The more places to show films the better. Streaming has changed the game; it is not just studios now.”

When asked for advice on the new Saudi film industry, Lee said: “People should tell their stories, no matter what their background is.

You know your story better than anybody, and for young filmmakers it is easier – you should know yourself.

Write what you know first – not to say you can’t get off that in the future, but write what you know and know what you write.”

One of the panel discussions revolved around the change IGTV has brought

12 | www.broadcastprome.com | December 2019

Afnan Al Qassimi, creator of Boxing Girls, urged people to think differently.

to Instagram. Speaking to BroadcastPro ME about IGTV, Samer Jamal, Strategic Partnerships Manager of Instagram MENA, said: “How people consume and engage with content is changing, with video being the most popular type of content online. We’ve seen an increase in video consumption on Instagram, both in Feed and in Stories – IGTV was a natural evolution.” Jamal added that IGTV has evolved to include longer videos, previews in-feed and series options.

“We’ll continue listening to our community to make IGTV the best long-form video destination to connect people to the creators and content they love.”

An interesting presentation that caught our attention was The Power of Writing Female-Driven Content & Youth-Oriented Stories by Afnan Al Qassimi, creator and writer of Boxing Girls from MBC Studios. She said: “In

the Arab region, we have so many women and youngsters who want to do something and have ambition – we have so many stories to tell.

When I wrote Boxing Girls, the whole idea came after sitting with one woman who lifted weights at the Olympic Games, but came back and found no respect from the people around her – no one really cared, they just wanted her to get married.

“Yes, we took risks about certain issues, but we realised that people wanted us to explore this. It is important that films and TV are not just entertainment. Females and young people can be very outspoken, and we want to do so much more with them as characters – we want to see different, refreshing types instead of the type of character we might normally see on TV.” On.DXB concluded with several concerts attended by UAE residents and tourists.

PRONEWS

MBC hits new milestone with launch of first short-form Original on Shahid MBC Group has announced the launch of its first-ever original production on Shahid, its VOD platform.

Titled ElDiva, the drama series stars superstar Cyrine Abdel Nour in the lead role, alongside Yacob Alfarhan and Egyptian folk singer and actress Bosy. Directed by Randa Alam, the production has Lebanese and Egyptian scriptwriters involved in its creation. ElDiva marks a shift in traditional drama productions, inspired by real events and fiction and complemented by the experiences of MBC’s producers involved in producing various talentspotting TV shows.

Alex Meouchy, MBC Senior Regional Manager of Content, commented: “We have produced a large number of Arabic adaptations of global,

Johannes Larcher, MD of Shahid, said the launch is in line with MBC's five-year digital growth strategy.

ElDiva stars Cyrine Abdel Nour in the lead, alongside Yacob Alfarhan and actress Bosy.

top-rated talent-spotting TV shows. During work on these productions, the team encounters numerous situations that would be absolutely fascinating to watch as a fictional drama.

Viewers always want to know what happens when the cameras are turned off, and so this is how the idea of ElDiva came about.”

Johannes Larcher, MD of Shahid, added: “MBC was the first major media company in the region to launch a VOD platform. It continues to cement its status as a leader in this vital sector. The launch of Shahid’s first short-form Original is in line with the Group’s extensive five-year growth and expansion plan. Multinational drama

productions are more popular than ever, thanks to the global digital platforms and VOD.” Larcher concluded: “Today, we launch our first title of short-form Shahid Originals, and this is just the beginning.

We promise viewers more premium content and quality productions with diverse storytelling in the coming period.”

Viacom, CBS shake up leadership ahead of merger Viacom and CBS have realigned some leadership roles ahead of the merger expected to take place in December.

Viacom CEO Bob Bakish will retain his position at ViacomCBS; while Chris McCarthy, who currently oversees the MTV, VH1, Logo and CMT networks, will take charge of Comedy Central, Paramount Network, TV Land and Smithsonian Channel,

according to news reports.

Kent Alterman, who runs Comedy Central, TV Land and Paramount Network, and Sarah Levy, Chief Operating Officer of Viacom Media Networks, will depart after the merger.

David Nevins, CCO of CBS and CEO of Showtime Networks, will be responsible for BET Networks. Scott Mills will continue to run BET. Brian Robbins will continue to

oversee Nickelodeon along with AwesomenessTV. Alex Berkett, Senior VP, Corporate Development and Strategy at Viacom, will become Executive VP, Corporate Development and Strategy at ViacomCBS; Jose Tolosa, Chief Transformation Officer at Viacom, will continue to oversee integration efforts for ViacomCBS. Nancy Phillips will serve as Executive VP,

Chief People Officer at ViacomCBS. Marva Smalls, Global Head of Inclusion Strategy at Viacom, will continue the same role at ViacomCBS. Pierluigi Gazzolo has been appointed President of OTT International and Viacom International Studios (VIS) at Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN). He will focus on accelerating the roll-out of Pluto TV across international markets.

December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 13

PRONEWS

Nextologies launches new operations in Dubai Media City Canada-headquartered broadcast solutions provider Nextologies Limited has expanded into the Middle East with a new office in Dubai Media City. The firm will focus on offering video transport technology and OTT enablement services to this region.

Overseeing Nextologies’ Dubai operation as SVP Business Development is Elie Kawkabani. He has launched several pay-TV businesses and supplied TV

Elie Kawkabani will oversee the establishment of Nextologies’ Dubai operation.

Nikon launches Z50 camera ounces, it is compatible Nikon Middle East with all NIKKOR Z lenses FZE has launched and approximately its latest mirrorless 360 DSLR lenses. camera in the Z series Narendra Menon, – the Z50. Delivering 4K MD of Nikon Middle ultra HD 1080p quality East, said: “With with time-lapse and slowthis device, we have motion features, Z50 is the prioritised the needs of smallest interchangeable the blogging, vlogging lens DX-format camera and entire online content ever. With a wide lens creator community, mount, it can shoot stills who need something up to ISO 51,200 with small and simple that virtually no noise, making it great for low-light shots. delivers sharp and uncompromised quality.”

Like the other cameras in the Z series, it is powered

by Nikon’s EXPEED 6 image processing system.

At the launch of Nikon's Weighing Z50 mirrorless camera. around 14

14 | www.broadcastprome.com | December 2019

operators in North America with multiple channels, as well as operated his own B2C platform.

Sasha Zivanovic, CEO of Nextologies in Toronto, explained: “We’ve been conducting business in the MENA region for years.

We believe the media technology landscape in MENA will undergo a major restructuring and growth over the next decade, therefore we wanted to be part of the community that leads that growth.”

WWE and Saudi General Entertainment Authority expand event partnership Following the historic Crown Jewel event in Riyadh, WWE and the Saudi General Entertainment Authority (GEA) have expanded their live event partnership through 2027 to include a second annual largescale event. WWE and GEA also continue to work towards the completion of a media agreement in the MENA region.

A brief press statement said the “long-term partnership demonstrates WWE and GEA’s commitment to bring sports entertainment to the region, and supports Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030”.

PRG Deltasound invests in Shure Axient Digital systems PRG Deltasound has invested in 48 channels of Shure Axient Digital wireless quad receivers to expand its show inventory. The investment is further complemented by ADX1, AD1, ADX2/KSM9 and AD2/KSM8 TX units and three AXT600UK (Axient spectrum manager) systems. The system was supplied by regional distributor NMK Distributor. Al Woods, Director of Projects at PRG Deltasound said: “We do a lot of shows that need high levels of redundancy, so the ADX1 and ADX2’s dual frequency, along with the showlink and spectrum manager, enables us to scan and have frequency back-ups for single artists on the same unit.

PRG Deltasound does an awful lot of important shows for both local and international clients.

The Axient system helps make every event easier, to reduce the risk of RF failure. For example, now when we double pack people with ADX1, we not only have redundant hardware but the ability to frequency hop within each pack. The scanning system and the way that the showlink works is also pretty cool."

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For more info please email enquiries@7production.net or call JEDDAH / KSA + 966 55 047 6777 DUBAI +971 4 441 5797. Abu Dhabi +971 2 4012734 LEBANON +961 71 182777 UK, FRANCE, FINLAND +971 5 44990777

PROSUMMIT

BROADCASTPRO SUMMIT: FEEL THE WINDS OF CHANGE

Regional experts discuss how key players and new market entrants should tackle the dynamics currently impacting the broadcast sector and emphasise the need for agility and adaptation in light of what the audience wants 16 | www.broadcastprome.com | December 2019

PROSUMMIT

Very few sectors are as powerfully impacted by the tradewinds of digitisation as the world of broadcast.

It’s also the industry in which creativity, strategy and through-the-line marketing have evolved to a greater degree than just about anywhere else.

So a major conference in the broadcast space has a host of very real issues to digest. Highlighting this agenda, on November 13th, the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit brought together more than 300 of the industry’s top professionals.

Endorsed by the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU), the Summit set out the bandwidth for industry change through a programme of six panel sessions, tackling critical topics often muted but seldom discussed in detail: The Content Owners; The IP Roadmap; Migrating to the Cloud; The Esports Players; Women Executives - Breaking the Mould; and The CEOs: Envisioning a New Media Landscape.

Among the most substantive points to emerge was how, for example, the content producers are looking at a robust agenda of recommissioning in order to reflect changing viewer tastes and habits. Yet conversely, content specialists don’t necessarily see OTT as the death-knell of cinema,

but rather, a companion-format that can’t in any shape or form replace the experience of visiting a movie house.

With standards now established in IP, broadcasters seem more open to committing to migration timelines, while the cloud experts explored the pain points connected to making the shift from on-prem.

Esports is big business, but there are tangible steps to take in order to deliver the full potential in the GCC markets. For example, there need to be more professional players in the region - enthusiastic amateurs aren’t going to set the scene on fire.

Meanwhile, an exclusive women’s panel argued that discrimination must be confronted in society before the workplace can fully embrace diversity, and that business owners must become aware that diversity is the wellspring of innovation and growth. The discussion culminated in a fascinating debate between senior media executives on how their business models have shifted and what they envision for 2020.

A conference can only be judged by the impact on its sector: the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit documented both the industry’s appetite for change and the potential of the next 12 months. PRO

December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 17

PROCONTENT

CONTENT, QUO VADIS?

Leading content owners came together at the BroadcastPro Summit to highlight the state of content in terms of acquisition and distribution, and how it is affected by market trends and digitisation in the region

EMPIRE ENTERTAINMENT

Rony Mitri

3RD ACTION

Asim Altokhais

IMAGE NATION ABU DHABI

Ben Ross

Content may still be king, but will it be recognisable in the new world of digitisation, OTT protocols and the power of big data to dissect viewer preferences and customise new genres and formats? How will the tastes of Generation Z impact the content providers and the dynamics of commissioning new product?

These were the factors addressed in a powerful panel debate at the recent ASBU BroadcastPro Summit.

Titled The Content Owners: Content – a mixed bag for new-generation viewers?, the panel featured Asim Altokhais, a Saudi-based award-winning scriptwriter and co-founder and GM of 3rd action, Inc; Ben Ross, Chief Content Officer, Image Nation Abu Dhabi; Serge Zabbal, Business Director, Empire Entertainment; and Wesam Kattan, Vice President – Content at Viu. Moderator Rony Mitri, Head of Non-Theatrical Distribution – MENA, Empire Entertainment, was keen to investigate how current market trends are affecting not only the appetite for certain styles of content and the genres that are preferred, but how – in an increasingly digital environment – the availability of viewing data and demographics are being used to shape the actual commissioning brief.

Given that together the panellists represented a 360-degree understanding of the sector, they were able to provide a remarkable snapshot of the current state of

18 | www.broadcastprome.com | December 2019

EMPIRE ENTERTAINMENT

Serge Zabbal

VIU

Wesam Kattan

play, especially after Mitri’s opening remark: “Acquisition and distribution: the aim is to provide a content roadmap of the region. Where do you place your bets?”

Ben Ross commented that from an Image Nation point of view, “It is all about movies and narrative TV shows. It’s all about stories; when we find a story we love, that’s what we focus on.”

Kattan concurred, to a degree. “We focus on drama series and movies. We’re very focussed on what type of drama series we commission. We want to take the non-traditional route when planning these series. For example, we’re going away from the 30-episode formula. The young today simply don’t have time.”

When asked if Asim Altokhais took any of this into consideration when writing scripts, he said: “I have to look at it the business way, at what trends in drama people are interested in. Sci-fi, thrillers, crime – these are all interesting for the new generation.”

The debate then highlighted that while it’s one thing to talk about trends and viewer preferences, the question remains as to how ‘scientifically’ these changes are understood – which is vital if all parties involved are to create content that is an accurate fit to market need. For example, is there any kind of database that can help define these preferences?

“There are two ways in which we use data,” remarked Viu’s Kattan. “Firstly, through market research on what pulls Generation Z to the screen; and then, when we

PROCONTENT

“90% of the people who get involved in the industry are amateurs; there is no recruitment with international companies at all” Asim Altokhais, 3rd Action onboard a concept, we make sure that we retro-engineer all these topical themes into it.”

When the same question was posed to Empire Entertainment, as “cinema-owners, distributors, producers”, on whether analytics play any role at all for a cinema distributor, Zabbal responded in the affirmative. “We have to talk to the scriptwriters and the production houses to ensure we have this.

As distributors, we have to be on top of the trend. The line is open…”

But it’s not mandatory to follow wherever the analytics lead, commented Ross, stating that “you have to go with what you believe to be a good story”.

Kattan agreed, saying you have to go with “your gut feeling”.

“So many times when I’ve met great producers, they’ve said their biggest successes would never have happened if they’d only followed the analytics.”

While for many viewers, regional content is forever associated with locally created Ramadan TV blockbusters, there seems to be little doubt that local content plays a larger role across the complete broadcast mix. It’s become a priority even for those businesses whose forte was typically a box office hit-list.

With this dynamic up for discussion, Viu’s Kattan said: “We want to be seen as a local provider for a local audience. We focus most of our

licensing efforts to provide content for that local audience – but there simply isn’t enough Arabic content to provide premium viewing.”

Mitri pointed out that Empire Entertainment had recently decided to go into regional production, and

“That experience of eating popcorn and having a night out can’t be replaced.

OTT has its own charm, but it’s one that complements people wanting to go to the theatre … it doesn’t take its place” Serge Zabbal, Empire Entertainment

Most of the panellists said they were moving away from the 30-episode formula popular during Ramadan.

December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 19

PROCONTENT

questioned the rationale behind it.

“We want to have quantity when we distribute, and although the scale of the international content is greater, it’s important to grow local content too. Our plan is to leverage the balance to 50/50, with maybe even more weight to regional content. Saudi Arabia may turn out to be a very interesting influence here,” commented Zabbal.

Ross stated, however, that the scriptwriting element may be a stumbling block. “Scriptwriting is a complex issue. Much of what is being created doesn’t fit with what Kattan and Zabbal actually want – the 30-episode Ramadan series just doesn’t work anymore. Remember, it all starts with the script: without that, you have nothing.”

A question for many is whether the shift to digital will eventually lead the cinema industry to implode altogether. It became evident from the panellists that the ‘black-white’

“We’re very focussed on what type of drama series we commission. We want to take the non-traditional route when planning these series.

For example, we’re going away from the 30-episode formula” Wesam Kattan, Viu

The opening of cinemas in KSA has brought a new spending audience into the mix, whose buying power will influence the production agendas of GCC providers, the panellists stated.

20 | www.broadcastprome.com | December 2019

version of the change to digital is largely inaccurate – the market is big enough for all eventualities, and even if content is reshaped and generically altered for an OTT audience, that doesn’t mean the box-office mix is automatically faced with a ‘change or die’ scenario.

Indeed, when Mitri asked Zabbal if this is likely, he replied: “It didn’t impact audiences, because people still want to experience going to the theatre. That experience of eating popcorn and having a night out can’t be replaced. OTT has its own charm, but it’s one that complements people wanting to go to the theatre, go to the mall and so on – it doesn’t take its place.”

Kattan added: “We’re here to coexist; nothing is about to replace going to the cinema.” (Urged

by Mitri to elaborate, especially when many are pushing for first window on OTT, he said: “You better ask the people doing it!”)

PROCONTENT

Ross offered an alternative view.

“Some OTT companies want to put the theatres out of business, others don’t. I personally think they can coexist, because many OTT viewers would want to see a movie they missed at the cinema.

Meanwhile, some movies are simply better suited to going straight to OTT, because sometimes the cinema channel costs are not worth the expense for that particular asset.”

Another powerful change agent is the advent of public cinema in Saudi Arabia. This has effectively brought a new audience of 39.9m into the viewer mix – a substantial number that surely can become a powerful lobby whose tastes and buying power will influence the commissioning and production agendas of GCC providers. Yet here, the panel again took the view that the likely changes are a good deal more nuanced than the rather dramatic picture mooted by many industry pundits.

Commenting on the impact, Zabbal’s view was: “Obviously, revenues will grow, plus Saudi audiences will be continually exposed to fresh content and this will encourage local content providers too. I hope we can see the birth of a second Egypt, a place where we see a completely new machine for production.”

Ross added: “What can be really important here is that we get a clear understanding of what a local Arabic audience wants, in a way that we can’t do in the UAE, where the market demographic is much too complicated. In Saudi, the market can be closely understood and modelled.”

As to whether this will really lead to a boom in local output, Kattan offered a more philosophical view: “If we can see content that is soughtafter by the audience, this will benefit every content provider in the region.

But we need to be patient: we need to give the Saudi audience time, because they’re simply not used to seeing Saudi movies. It needs time for

The way forward is to invest in creating quality Arabic content, the content experts agreed.

“What’s edgy in the Western market is very different from what’s edgy in the Saudi market.

What Western companies will do is far too edgy – you can’t ever get the right fit by coming from outside” Ben Ross, Image Nation Abu Dhabi

the Saudi industry to develop, and we need to see every aspect of the crew grow there and get much stronger.”

Altokhais seemed less optimistic.

“The industry is just not there.

90% of the people who get involved in the industry are amateurs; there is no recruitment with international companies at all.”

A telling – and chastening – view came from Kattan: “Local talent has to grow there, because you can’t get a foreigner to tell a Saudi story.”

Ross took this further, stating that Image Nation does “a lot on mentoring by bringing Western scriptwriters to advise local writers and help them build their work. But here’s the problem: what’s edgy in the Western market is very different from what’s edgy in the Saudi market.

What Western companies will do is far too edgy – you can’t ever get the right fit by coming from outside.”

Perhaps the greatest lesson learned from the panel was that while it’s a sure hallmark of market development to have international product shifting through theatres and OTT alike (and it’s likely that the two approaches might well be complementary, not exclusive), the real work – generating a wealth of topical and inspirational local material – is only just beginning. PRO

December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 21

PROIP

KNOWLEDGE PARTNER TM

EXPLORING MENA'S IP ROADMAP The second panel looked at IP migration plans among MENA broadcasters, in association with Diversified. The aim was to understand their IP vision – whether they see operational benefits in moving to an IP-based system, what their current challenges are, and in what areas of their network they intend to begin the transition

ONE DIVERSIFIED FZ LLC

Suhail Ahmed

DUBAI MEDIA

Afzal Lakdawala

DIVERSIFIED

Andrew Davies

The conversation brought together Yusuf Al-Butti, Head of Technology and Engineering at twofour54; Afzal Lakdawala, Head of Technology Planning and Projects at Dubai Media Inc; David Clark, CTO of Sky News Arabia; and Andrew Davies, Director, Media & Entertainment EMEA, Diversified.

Moderating the panel was Suhail Ahmed, CEO of One Diversified FZ LLC and the chief architect of this discussion.

After a dramatic beginning, quoting Pixar’s John Lasseter – “The art challenges technology, and technology inspires art” – Suhail Ahmed asked the panellists where we stand in terms of standards, given that the lack of standards is one of the critical reasons for the slow adoption of IP in most markets.

Giving the discussion further context, Andrew Davies pointed out that when the industry first started to introduce IP systems, they were primarily “proprietary systems and the whole ecosystem was based on a single vendor system sometimes”.

“As the markets have matured and the standards have also matured, we have seen that change and shift to bestof-breed systems. We are not quite there yet. There are still issues around control, but the launch of standards has helped us deliver projects to those standards over the years.”

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SKY NEWS ARABIA

David Clark

TWOFOUR54

Yusuf Al-Butti

Afzal Lakdawala of DMI seconded this, calling ST2110 a very mature step. “With ST-2110 being ratified by SMPTE and accepted by all the vendors as the de facto standard for broadcast equipment moving forward on IP, broadcasters will now be more comfortable making the move to IP, since interoperability will not be a concern.

Additionally, since ST-2110 standards are video formatagnostic, the long-term commitment will not be an issue.”

Everyone agreed that the lack of standards has been thus far a severe deterrent, but with this being addressed, there will be greater confidence in undertaking the migration.

Twofour54’s Yusuf Al-Butti pointed out that IP will indeed be the way forward, especially in remote production, which is one key area that will witness massive adoption of IP. In a news environment where speed and efficiency are critical, David Clark, CTO of Sky News Arabia, noted that the broadcaster already benefits from using IP in some areas of the network.

“On the contribution side, we are very heavily invested in IP. For our news gathering and live content, we are about 80:20 right now, where 80% of our content from a live capacity

PROIP

The lack of standards has been a severe deterrent in migrating to IP, the panellists commented.

is delivered over an IP network or public internet. I think it comes down to where speed of getting content to a viewer in the broadcast chain, in a traditional studio set-up, can benefit from IP. Introducing an IP backbone should be about the efficiencies achieved by utilising a software-based technology stack.

Essentially, the software should do more for a production with less, rather than simply giving the ability to connect box after box to baseband distribution chains.”

The comment on software led Ahmed to bring the discussion to how international players are responding to the decoupling of software and hardware, and the availability of vendor-agnostic commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware to cater to their IP needs.

Referring to a slide Diversified presented, Davies showed how “more reliance on commercial off-the-shelf switches is allowing both broadcasters and systems integrators to tap into a much bigger market than we could

“As the markets have matured and the standards have also matured, we have seen that change and shift to best-of-breed systems” Andrew Davies, Diversified ever sustain as a broadcast market”.

With the IT industry already having made huge leaps in this technology, the broadcast industry no longer has to reinvent the wheel and can instead leverage the R&D, manufacturing and solutions that IT has to offer. “We are now starting to see COTS hardware used more in America and Europe.

We are seeing good adoption of those standards, and we have done several projects that have utilised those standards,” Davies pointed out.

Of course, with IP, Al-Butti noted that if the three corners of the triangle were previously the viewer, the technology and the content, telecoms has now entered that picture as a fourth party.

The panellists seemed to agree

that an IP implementation at any of their facilities would indeed include a lot of accompanying hidden costs, such as revamping the infrastructure and connectivity, training staff and developing the team to deal with new technology.

When Ahmed questioned if the benefits of a reduced OPEX outweigh the cost and other challenges, Al-Butti said they do “if you utilise and develop all the IP features in your system”. Lakdawala, however, pointed out that: “If you plan it right in a gradual step-by-step manner, these challenges can be overcome.”

However, he also remarked that in a large organisation like Dubai Media Inc, with substantial infrastructure deployments across production, post, transmission, OBs and SNGs, among others, IP implementation will be “a lengthy and gradual process that will take both time and effort”.

“We went through a similar cycle when we moved from an SD tapebased to a 3G, file-based system, and we invested heavily into that so we

December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 23

PROIP

KNOWLEDGE PARTNER TM

cannot overlook that fact. But there is also a limitation to how much a 3G infrastructure can grow. We are actively looking at higher resolutions, and this automatically implies that we will have to take the IP route.”

To one of Lakdawala’s concerns about using existing infrastructure, Davies responded that one of the major advantages of an IP solution is being able to undertake upgrades without necessarily replacing some of that infrastructure.

Ahmed brought the discussion back to cost, asking how Clark could justify an IP implementation within a news environment, where rough projections show that IP costs 20 times more than an SDI facility and twice the effort to get it up and running.

Clark agreed, stating that infrastructure is one of the key concerns.

“Contribution might definitely be via IP, but I do not foresee us implementing an IP backbone for our production facility, because getting that content from the field to an end user with quality and efficiency would be challenging. I would have to break a lot of things in a 24/7 production facility to go IP. But over time, the relationship of the human production side of things and how we would go into an IP world to put all those production elements together to assist the journalist telling the story, is where we will start to see a lot more investment.

“I don’t think the technologies are there to help us drive that just yet, but over time, and hopefully in a three-year time frame, we will start to roadmap exactly what that production backbone looks like to get that content

“An IP solution will help us at twofour54 to build more studios with less galleries” Yusuf Al-Butti, twofour54

“Contribution might definitely be via IP, but I do not foresee us implementing an IP backbone for our production facility, because getting that content from the field to an end user with quality and efficiency would be challenging” David Clark, Sky News Arabia across to the viewer with speed.”

But not every media house is sure of its IP roadmap, noted Davies, stating that sometimes clients “ask us for our opinion” and the systems integrator tries to understand “what exactly they are trying to achieve” and if “IP is really for them”.

“You need to analyse what the client wants to achieve, to determine whether IP is really the right fit for them. In the UK, we have done three 4K projects over copper and fibre. We are still seeing baseband installations sitting alongside a large stack of large-scale projects in IP.” Lakdawala agreed that any decision on new technology implementations is determined by the business case and what the client wants to achieve. One business case does not work for all deployments.

“If you want to undertake virtualisation or a cloud-based infrastructure, your approach might be different from that of a client who wants to go with just higher resolution. It will all depend upon a client’s requirements

24 | www.broadcastprome.com | December 2019

and how they want to reap the benefits of an IP infrastructure.”

Davies agreed, but cautioned that clients often find it difficult to justify that business case in the short term.

“Some of these benefits will come in quite a few years’ time, and businesses are looking at ROIs within a two- or three-year cycle. We have sometimes found it difficult to justify the cost, although we know a client would actually reap benefits in a couple of years for that business.”

Al-Butti added here that there are substantial differences in how an entity like twofour54, which facilitates production, would benefit from IP, as opposed to broadcasters.

“An IP solution will help us at twofour54 to build more studios with less galleries. This means less capital expenditure, and this will reflect on the cost of the projects, and will give flexibility to use that infrastructure and technology in the long term. Therefore, the breakeven time will be shorter for the benefit of the investment and the service cost. This is an important feature for us because we want to use a studio from one production to the next without any time lag.”

One of the big discussions the panellists circled back to was the importance of tapping into an IT-based infrastructure.

“If as a broadcaster I don’t look at investing in IP, I would still look at IP service-oriented architecture, because a service provider like twofour54, for instance, may have a return on that investment faster than I would,” commented Clark.

Another significant concern with IP has also been security.

“If you architect correctly in an IP world, there is no threat to security,” Clark reassured the audience, adding that as someone with experience working in security and the online space for the last five years, he has often tried to convince operators that a security service in the cloud is far more beneficial and secure.

PROIP

KNOWLEDGE PARTNER TM

Clarifying further, he said broadcasters have typically operated in islands.

“When you connect infrastructure to the internet, there is a risk. If you architect with security in mind and keep agile to continually improve the security posture, you mitigate that risk significantly and you keep moving away from a potential threat. There are smart people and companies to engage to help with this. The broadcast world previously kept their infrastructure on an island. Media demands today do not allow for this and the industry need not fear a connected world.”

The discussion on IT led Ahmed to question if it might be a good idea to get engineers with a different mindset to help “evolve our operations in broadcast” and “migrate away from the monolithic approach”.

Lakdawala said he would prefer to retrain a broadcast engineer, as people in broadcast environments are well trained to function in a

“With ST-2110 being ratified

by SMPTE and accepted by all the vendors … broadcasters will now be more comfortable making the move to IP” Afzal Lakdawala, DMI broadcast ecosystem where no downtime is acceptable. Clark, however, pointed out that infrastructure engineers with experience working with large SaaS solutions may be in a better position to take an IP leadership role within an organisation.

Lakdawala agreed, but also expressed optimism that engineers within broadcast already have exposure to IP systems and with time, will eventually move in that direction.

“We have been working in one direction for so many years, so you can’t change a mindset overnight. As your infrastructure progresses in that direction, people will change how they function and develop.”

Davies agreed that training people

is one of Diversified’s biggest challenges. It took the SI four to five years to train its internal workforce on how to deliver IP systems.

“Diversified decided to do an IP roadshow with fully operational IP systems in a couple of flight cases. We took that on the road and trained all our local offices, and that became an internal tool.

Then companies started asking us if we could run that IP roadshow for them as well. It then became a useful tool, without investing in the actual technology for them to train on the system, and we plan to bring that to CABSAT next year.”

Ahmed concluded by asking if any of the panellists were making a move to IP in the future. Clark said not yet; Lakdawala commented that DMI was working towards an IP roadmap; and Al-Butti added that as twofour54 develops its new studios at its new facility in Yas Island, IP will be the technology of choice, with technical and operational readiness in place. PRO

IP implementation requires not just a technical installation but also a change in mindset and an awareness of long-term benefits, the experts remarked.

December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 25

PROCLOUD

CLEARING MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE CLOUD Tech speakers at the BroadcastPro Summit shared their views on current cloud trends, the region’s status quo and some of the factors to keep in mind when considering cloud solutions

STARZPLAY

Saleem Bhatti

MBC GROUP

Adriaan Bloem

The cloud panel at the BroadcastPro Summit brought together four experts in the field: Saleem Bhatti, CTO of STARZPLAY; Faraz Arshad, Director of Infrastructure and Platforms at STARZPLAY; Adriaan Bloem, Head of Digital Infrastructure at MBC Group; and Salloum El Dahdaah, CTO of ITWorksMe. Saleem Bhatti set the stage for a fascinating discussion by exploring some common myths about the cloud and encouraging a debate on the varied benefits of moving to it, exploring multi-cloud environments, changes required within an organisation and more.

One of the first myths that the panellists dispelled was that cloud brings immediate cost benefits to a company. Rather, they explained how cloud offers the perfect opportunity to not just optimise a business but to also undertake activities that may have been prohibitive or difficult to achieve in the past, like analysing video streams for metadata and transcription. In some cases, the launch of a service would be impossible if a company relied on an on-premise solution.

MBC’s Bloem pointed out that “cloud is not so much about saving costs as enabling you to be a more competitive business”.

26 | www.broadcastprome.com | December 2019

STARZPLAY

Faraz Arshad

ITWORKSME

Salloum El Dahdaah

In explaining MBC’s move to the cloud, he said that one of the first things he did when he joined MBC Group eight years ago was “to aim to get rid of the servers and move into the cloud”, which the broadcaster did organically.

Most of its digital infrastructure is now in the cloud, with just some hardware encoders left in a data centre in the MBC building. On the broadcast side of things, however, many things are still running on-premise.

“We don’t want to run any of our hardware. That’s not our core strength and not where we are adding value.

What I would love for Technical Operations to move into the cloud is our archives, so we can run analytics on it, and use AI to generate metadata from it. That would make it easier for us to reuse it and extract more value from our vast library – something that a broadcaster rarely does if the content is on stacks of tapes in a room.”

For an SVOD service like STARZPLAY, Arshad said the requirements and benefits of moving to the cloud are different. STARZPLAY moved to a cloud solution five years ago, purely because an on-premise solution did not give it the ability to launch a great service that required efficient content processing workflows and hosting a complete

PROCLOUD

applications stack, while considering the time to market (TTM) factor.

“When you have very intensive workflows, you need real elasticity to get your compute done. How can you do that with limited resource pools that you are running in your own data centres?

“One bottleneck we observed was when we started off initially on-premise. Almost immediately, we recognised that this was not going to work. This is because all the studios we work with are in the US and Europe, and for them to get their content delivered over Aspera and Signiant was causing a bottleneck.

In essence, we were getting stuck.

Then, once the content was ingested, efficient transcoding and packaging led to another bottleneck.

“That’s why we took the cloud approach. We shifted all our workloads with regard to content operations to the cloud, and within a couple of months we had a decent library to start the service with.

Along with the content workflows,

“The question to ask when you are looking at adopting a cloud environment is whether it has enough resource pools to adopt the kind of scale that you are pushing towards it” Faraz Arshad, STARZPLAY we also started hosting our micro service applications stack and CDN origins within the cloud, to achieve both scalability and performance.”

Of course, moving from on-prem to a cloud solution is easier said than done when the right skills are not available within an organisation.

Arshad said STARZPLAY built an internal digital transformation team led by him; he helped the team to not only engage with cloud transformation but also get onto the cloud adoption path, by providing the information they needed.

One company that has successfully enabled digital transformations at many regional TV stations – including LBCI, MTV, Saudi TV, Rotana, Al

Arabiya, Alsumaria News, Al Jadeed, Rudaw, Kuwait TV and Sharjah Broadcasting Corporation – is Lebanon-based ITWorksMe. CTO Salloum El Dahdaah says migration from a traditional broadcast environment to the cloud “requires a lot of integration at the back end”. To make it easier for his clients and to ensure they were able to operate from a single platform, ITWorksMe built a KWIKmotion platform and integrated the functions of KWIKmotion with multiple cloud services.

“At the back end, we undertook several integrations on multiple clouds, because there is no single cloud that offers all the answers,” he explains. “For instance, there are AI functions like transforming speech to text and enabling those translations. We used IBM Watson and Google Vision at the same time.”

The panellists also tried to ensure a clear distinction was being made between using multiple clouds and going with a hybrid cloud

The panellists said that moving even partially to the cloud helps streamline efficiencies within a company.

December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 27

PROCLOUD

solution. They seemed to suggest they were using multiple cloud solutions for different tasks, and also went on to point out the subtle differences between the phrases ‘multi-cloud’ and ‘hybrid cloud’.

“We use multiple clouds for redundancy, back-up and additional services. We can’t use one cloud for different tasks,” explained El Dahdaah.

In the case of MBC, Bloem pointed out that the broadcaster was running all its backend processes and its own software on Amazon while its videos are served from Microsoft Azure.

“All of this has moved into a multi-cloud set-up, not because that’s the strategy, but because we need different capabilities from different cloud environments. That’s not nearly as clean as reading an article about multi-cloud, hybrid cloud and so on. Real-life set-ups are never that clean,” Bloem said.

Arshad also pointed out that a hybrid cloud delivery model is not for everybody.

“During Ramadan, everybody is ingesting episodes at the same time. This year, we saw 90 episodes ingested at the same time. If we were not on the cloud, we could not have processed that data” Salloum El Dahdaah, CTO, ITWorksMe “Hybrid cloud adoption requires a strong cloud centre of excellence (CCoE) focussing strongly on cloud governance. The workload readiness for a hybrid cloud ecosystem is really important, as not all the apps can work in a real hybrid environment. The question to ask when you are looking at adopting a cloud environment is whether it has enough resource pools to adopt the kind of scale that you are pushing towards it.

“Essentially, when considering hybrid cloud, you have several components to factor in – the bottlenecks, resource pooling, your key metrics when shifting towards the cloud, scalability or

The panellists said the real benefits of cloud can be defined not only in terms of money but also in terms of time and resources.

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availability or throughput availability, or where you can have a hybrid cloud management layer and the orchestration of dockers between different clouds. That’s another challenge for DevOps, which is why infrastructure as code (IaC) is a key component to consider while taking the hybrid cloud approach.

“Once we have that per cloud performance and scalability matrix, you look at the percentage of traffic that is being served with the right KPAs (key performance areas) from each cloud, and which is doing better than the other. That is one dynamic approach required while adopting a hybrid cloud.

“The other approach could be a multi-cloud environment, where you have some stand-alone workloads running out of different clouds. Workloads may be run out of Oracle or Google, because we can afford to have those latency metrics for that particular region.”

El Dahdaah pointed out that one of the key benefits of the cloud is the speed of video processing.

“We have the ability to process around a hundred videos at a time on a local server, and to push the content onto different cloud systems and launch multiple instances at a time.

This can be quite limited on-prem,” he remarked, adding that this is especially the case during the month of Ramadan. “During Ramadan, everybody is ingesting episodes at the same time. This year, we saw 90 episodes ingested at the same time.

If we were not on the cloud, we could not have processed that data.”

The discussion came back to budget, and Bhatti asked Bloem to explain how the efficiencies gained by going on the cloud far outweigh the costs of maintaining and keeping them on-premise.

“Would you prefer to have one server and get your videos processed in 100 hours or have ten servers and get it done in 10 hours? The cost may be the same but it’s ten

PROCLOUD

times faster to do the latter. Those are the real benefits rather than a simple cost equation. Cloud gives you that big peak scalability that you wouldn’t get on-premise, because no one will install that kind of compute power on-prem for using it once a day,” explained Bloem.

The panellists all agreed that moving everything entirely to the cloud may unfortunately not be possible at present, due to the massive bandwidth required and the lack of an affordable regional solution.

“You need multiple 10GB and basically the best you can get is probably multiple 1GB and it already costs a fortune. That’s not enough throughput, and then there are latency issues as well,” Bloem said.

They agreed that although cloud vendors are probably selling the ability to edit real-time in the cloud, it was still not quite there in the Middle East because of this.

They also agreed that cost is defined in terms of time and resources. In fact, this is where the real benefits of cloud can be seen.

“In five years, we will see that companies that don’t embrace this change and innovation will be lagging far behind, and then it may be impossible for them to catch up,” Bloem added.

El Dahdaah agreed that cost is “not just money but also time… as a broadcaster, sometimes the need to be the fastest to publish a news story means that you need an environment that can help you achieve that”.

However, Arshad pointed out that cloud solution providers are also looking at different pricing options for the kind of immediate scalability required to handle such workloads.

“Public cloud providers are willing to come up with better pricing models that may work for the broadcast and OTT industries, which require heavy and intensive resources. Otherwise, a broadcaster may eventually think of investing in a private cloud where they can

control the cost. It needs to make sense operations-wise for them, so vendors should revisit the kind of packages they are pushing towards broadcasters for these heavy resources in terms of compute, storage and data transfer.”

When Bhatti asked if the panellists use cloud solutions as provided or customise them, each one commented that they add workarounds to ensure the cloud solution works for them.

Arshad described STARZPLAY's journey. Initially, it had its CDN justin-time (JIT) video streaming origins hosted on a cloud. In some cases, the public content delivery networks (CDNs) weren’t able to fetch the content, due to network latency and other performance-related challenges.

STARZPLAY introduced a hosted edge product called STARZPLAY Connect to host its JIT video streaming origins and edge application stack in different data centres localised in MENA regions; this eventually turned into a private CDN serving the video traffic along with other public CDNs. STARZPLAY is thus consuming both

“Cloud gives you that big peak scalability that you wouldn’t get on-premise, because no one will install that kind of compute power onprem for using it once a day” Adriaan Bloem, MBC Group

public CDNs using public cloudbased origins, and a private CDN to serve the video streaming.

To Bhatti’s concluding question, on which cloud solution is ahead of the rest, the panellists unanimously declared that AWS is the leader, though they pointed out the benefits of the others.

“AWS is the leader. IBM has better storage and speed. We don’t have any positive feedback on Azure.

Google is impressive on the CPU side,” commented El Dahdaah.

Arshad said it “depends on which industry you are in and what you expect from each cloud-managed service”. He explained that one must measure the cloud from different angles – “resource pooling and scalability, CPU performance and its generations, and cloud network peerings with local ISPs, which help last-mile users to interconnect with cloud while consuming the offered services”.

“My peers often said they moved to the cloud because they had managed services from particular cloud services. I will go with AWS not because of their managed services, but because of their scalability and performance. They have now launched in Bahrain and the cloud footprint they have is fantastic.”

Bloem remarked: “Amazon is far ahead of other cloud providers in terms of managed services and serverless, to the point where our teams think it’s punishment if they have to run something somewhere else. But it depends on where you are in your cloud journey. For very specific purposes, if you are containerising things, Microsoft and Google are good options to consider, or maybe a combination of them. It also depends on your corporate culture. Microsoft does a lot of handholding. AWS is more of a knowledge transfer and Google is more experimental.

It depends on what fits with your corporate culture.” PRO

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PROESPORTS

ESPORTS: BRINGING STYLE AND SUBSTANCE TO LOCAL GAMING Key luminaries from the esports ecosystem converged at the BroadcastPro Summit to discuss the direction that esports is taking, its growth prospects as a profession and its future in the MENA region

EMPIRE ENTERTAINMENT

Serge Zabbal

CYBER SPORTS LEAGUE

Karim Mousa

GAMESTOON/SPI

RIOT GAMES

Luciano Rahal

Esports is big business. In fact, it’s an industry sector valued in 2018 at $865m, with superstar gamers like Johan ‘Notail’ Sundstein and Mike ‘Hustro’ Rufaic generating millions of dollars in prize money and sponsorship and multiplayer online battle arenas attracting sponsors as diverse as Louis Vuitton and Cadbury-Schweppes.

Yet while it may be big business globally, is it big business here? Do the cultures of GCC nations encourage gaming prowess as a serious profession?

Most critically, do the non-endemic advertising brands know about its Generation Z impact and standing?

These were all factors tackled in a powerful and engaging panel debate at the recent ASBU BroadcastPro

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WEBEDIA

Can Akmenek

Edouard Griveaud

GINX TV

Michiel Bakker

ROSS VIDEO

Scott Barber

Summit. Titled The Esports Players – Keeping their Eye on the Game, it brought together key luminaries from almost every corner of the esports ecosystem.

The panel featured Can Akmenek, Channel Manager of Gametoon; Edouard Griveaud, VP Gaming Esports at Webedia; Karim Mousa, co-founder and Director of Cyber Sports League (CSL); Luciano Rahal, PR & Communications Manager at Riot Games; Michiel Bakker, CEO of GINX TV; and Scott Barber, Business Development Manager, XPression and VS Solutions at Ross Video.

Panel moderator Serge Zabbal, Business Director, Empire Entertainment, was keen to clarify for the audience exactly what esports really entails. After all, it covers an extraordinarily

PROESPORTS

There was consensus among the panellists that increasing the number of professional gamers from the current 10% would give esports a big boost.

“We need more successful events; and for the player base to grow larger” Karim Mousa, Cyber Sports League wide range of gaming formats, from first-person shooter to digital collectable card games and Battle Royale (to name only a few), and embraces all dimensions of players, from amateur living room collectives and ‘geeks’ through to top-tier, fully-branded professionals.

Consensus among the panellists largely centred around Zabbal’s view that it is best defined as “the competitive form of gaming, where teams get into league structures and are commercially sponsored”.

Luciano Rahal of Riot Games commented that “esports is competitive gaming at a professional and semi-professional level”, and then explained that “it came about by way of our asking the question

‘how can we celebrate competitive gamers in the same way as athletes?’

The reality is that it happened at a time when people’s behaviour was changing – and esports is the perfect fit for that new lifestyle, with everything coming together at the right time.”

Yet the reality is that esports is also structurally born from a media environment – it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but in the very fact that it’s broadcast or streamed and watched by millions. So in response to Zabbal’s prompting, the panellists looked in more detail at this very critical media relationship.

Scott Barber of Ross Video made the point that the broadcast element poses a level of technical challenge that’s often underrated. “The biggest challenge for media is signal conversion; there are more computers than cameras going into the router, and many of these machines are running at 123fps. But once signal conversion is taken care of, you’re back to a fairly standard set-up, where XPression graphics gets used exactly the same way as it would with traditional sporting coverage.”

In terms of media appeal in the GCC, Karim Mousa’s view was: “We are in a growth stage; there are still a few steps to get there; we need more successful events and for the player base to grow larger. At last, the idea of becoming a professional player is becoming more culturally acceptable – but we’re still a long way from where things are in the USA, Europe or parts of the Far East.”

One of the problems, as Can Akmenek observed, is: “Penetration is low compared to many areas; it will stay like this until we can introduce more key players to the region.”

More regional players or not, the potential is huge and the scale of audience in the sector can be very

“Penetration is low compared to many areas; it will stay like this until we can introduce more key players to the region” Can Akmenek, SPI December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 31

PROESPORTS

good: for example, the reality is that media entities like GINX TV are ‘real’ broadcasters, with – as Bakker pointed out – 50m households and 3m viewers per month. “Plus, we hope to be working with our partner OSN to help them do more than they are today, just carrying our channel.”

While focussing on broadcasters and the performance dimension, isn’t there also the danger of overlooking the real power base at the epicentre of the esports phenomenon – the gaming companies themselves?

Edouard Griveaud commented: “The world of sports is very similar to the world of esports in terms of its ecosystem, but the difference is that esports publishers have all the power.

The main problem here has always been how critical it is to involve the game publishers. One of the main ways round this is to engage them with the most sophisticated events and give them a real shop window for the power of esports entertainment.”

Scott Barber summed this up: “A big gaming event can really be a huge advert for the game being played.

There’s no better way for a games publisher to promote what they do to a relevant and committed audience.”

Other critical elements are also needed in order to bring money into the game. Any ecosystem needs money, and just as with the world of sport, there are many different avenues to explore. The debate is whether these are widely available within the ecosystem that the Middle East gaming scene currently offers.

Zabbal, for example, asked if it’s

“Esports has the advantage of carrying premium values, which aren’t present in gaming as such.

It’s a way to ‘reach the unreachables’” Edouard Griveaud, Webedia

“The biggest challenge for media is signal conversion; there are more computers than cameras going into the router, and many of these machines are running at 123fps” Scott Barber, Ross Video possible to bring in more advertisers – or is a subscription-based model likely to have better success?

Akmenek explained that SPI’s model combines sponsors and advertising. “Plus, we offer a linear platform with full esports gaming service in order to generate our money through a fee subscription basis. But we are looking to create our own exclusive events in the future.”

A real barrier to bringing money into the regional game has been the greatly varying success of the local performance platform. Ambitious events have sometimes fallen flat, and there seems to be a real need for greater confidence from the potential stakeholders all round. This can rapidly become a ‘cart-before-the-horse’ scenario in an environment where there is relatively little track record to point to.

Scott Barber pointed out what the commercial picture could nonetheless become. “The big events worldwide require a lot of kit, and we are developing a whole new market because of this. We have the Hyper Arena in the Luxor Hotel, Las Vegas, or the Esports Stadium in

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Arlington. ESL is now standardised on our XPressions graphics platform, with about 30 licence holders, and in Asia, there’s Banana Culture and VSPN. Plus, we recently signed a deal in Tokyo with Konami.”

So what about the core of the game – the gamers themselves? The panel considered whether the industry’s key stakeholders here in the GCC are doing enough to reach them.

GINX’s Bakker took the view that “the community of gamers is the most interesting and significant aspect of all… It’s the gamers who decide whether a particular game becomes an esport or not. It’s also often forgotten that when there’s a tournament prize of, say, $25m, half of that has been generated by the gamers themselves.

But the challenge is that broadcasters are not necessarily very good at focussing on that community.”

Luciano Rahal made the key point here that one of the achievements of esports has been to take attention away from the geekish, ‘coke-andchips’ image of the typical amateur player and create a portfolio of professional superstars.

“A player,” he said, “can make or break the business. Esports is a great advertisement, but it’s underpinned by the gamers. What better way to celebrate your players? But the reality is that you then have to put your top-performing players centre stage.”

In fact, the panellists made the same point about the style of gaming itself, and how dramatically it has evolved. Karim Mousa argued: “If we couldn’t livestream our tournaments, we wouldn’t be in business today. But we began by approaching tiny, unknown events in hotels and basements and taking the chance to expand and promote them. You have to take care of your community, because it’s not only central to your success, but to the success of the sector itself.”

For all the growth in esports popularity, the panel went on to consider what the most important

PROESPORTS

next steps must be in order to take the local ecosystem to the next level and really build professional participation.

Indeed, the professional engagement figures aren’t at all good in local tournaments. It’s often the case that up to 90% of gamers are enthusiastic amateurs, keen to take part but lacking the battle-hardened finesse of their professional counterparts in the US, Europe or the Far East.

Luciano Rahal commented: “We’re not in a good place at the moment. The game has a ranking system, but here even the mid-line

“When there’s a tournament prize of, say, $25m, half of that has been generated by the gamers themselves” Michiel Bakker, GINX TV

is only 10% of the player base. I don’t think this region is there yet. But will it eventually get there? Absolutely!”

Will greater sponsorship and commercial advertisers pave the way to that growth? As Zabbal mentioned, elsewhere in the global scene we expect to see F&B businesses, fast food chains and lifestyle brands being big sponsors, but what about here in the Middle East?

Edouard Griveaud explained: “Esports has the advantage of carrying premium values which aren’t present in gaming as such. It’s a way to ‘reach the unreachables’. It means you can reach those kids in their own environments.

Telcos, banks, car makers and luxury brands – they all have to be aware of this appeal. We can see the true power of esports by looking at the current involvement of luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz and Louis Vuitton.”

Rahal defines this challenge in one word: education. “We need to educate potential advertisers about the power

“Esports is great business but it's underpinned by the gamers” Luciano Rahal, Riot Games of gaming and what it actually does.

That’s happened very convincingly in many of the global markets, and now we need to put some initiative into ensuring we can follow suit.”

The panel session cast light on the two paramount factors in developing the local esports universe: firstly, encouraging the role of professional players and a structure to induct them into the highest echelons of esports; and secondly, the imperative to encourage would-be advertisers to wise up to the lucrative financial opportunities that this unique and burgeoning ecosystem undoubtedly offers. PRO

The panel agreed that like global advertisers, regional brands also need to be educated about the power of gaming.

December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 33

PROWOMEN

DIVERSITY DRIVES INNOVATION AND GROWTH IN BUSINESS In our first-ever Women in Media discussion, senior panellists argued that women have the ability to turn around a business by bringing fresh and innovative perspectives to traditional modes of thinking

VIACOM INTERNATIONAL MEDIA NETWORKS

DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS

NISAA BROADCASTING RADIO COMPANY

OSN

YUPPTV

NOMAD

Tracey Grant

Noha Jadallah

Amanda Turnbull

Zahra Zayat

One of the factors driving the agendas of the ASBU Broadcast Pro Summit over the last nine years has been a commitment to unravelling some of the abiding industry challenges, and there’s surely no clearer place to start than with the role of women as decision-makers and champions.

So one of the core panels of the 2019 Summit, Women Executives – Breaking the Mould, set about looking at the trailblazers and their experiences – the positives, the enduring inertia and the potentially better ways forward.

In her introductory statement, moderator Tracey Grant, Viacom Vice President for Content & Channels Middle East, pointed out a few facts. The model of leadership is predominantly male in most industries,

34 | www.broadcastprome.com | December 2019

Maysoun Odeh Gangat

Zoe Griffiths with Forbes announcing that the number of female CEOs on the Forbes 500 list has risen to 6.6%. She asked how each woman on the panel got to her current leadership role, and what it would take for more women to get there and to move on to board positions.

When the question of why diversity is needed was raised, Amanda Turnbull, VP and Country Manager for Middle East and Africa at Discovery Communications, highlighted how diversity is fundamental to innovation and growth within any business.

“Diversity drives different thinking. Different thinking drives innovation. Innovation drives a competitive advantage.

Thus, diversity should be a priority for business,” she

PROWOMEN

“Our ethos is around storytelling, and diversity is important to create content” Zoe Griffiths, Nomad said, adding that the broadcast industry is challenged in so many different ways today that “having the ability to think differently is absolutely critical” to its survival.

As someone who leads Discovery across MENA, Turnbull proudly pointed out that 50% of the company’s workforce in the region is female and many of the senior management are women, including her boss.

“At Discovery, this concept of diversity is baked into our DNA, because we can’t serve global audiences or tell global stories across any screen unless we are thinking in a diverse way. I have worked for more than 30 years now outside the UK and I have been here for six

years, in APAC for 17 years, working across Hong Kong, China, Taipei, Singapore and Korea, and I have worked in Eastern Europe and Russia. For me, it’s about creating a positive workplace for everybody and having that flexibility, respect and work-life balance.”

Maysoun Odeh Gangat, co-founder and Managing Director at Nisaa Broadcasting Radio Company, took the discussion forward by pointing out that one of the reasons she founded Nisaa FM was so society could see that “women are producers of media content and not just consumers… when I established Nisaa FM, the whole idea was to empower women in media and through media”.

She highlighted the many societal constraints women working in the media face in Palestinian and Arab society, “like working late nights as journalists, not having a safe environment to work in, encountering harassment and unequal pay, as well as poor conditions for maternity leave”. If a woman gets pregnant, “it hinders her from reaching top posts, even becoming

a CEO or having senior roles”.

She also pointed out that media plays a very important role in changing a society’s mindset, and this is what Nisaa has helped to do over the ten years since it was established.

Taking the equal opportunity agenda further, Nomad co-founder Zoe Griffiths said her company already has a balanced workplace environment, with a 50-50 ratio, and in a few weeks, the production house’s current hiring would tip the balance in favour of women.

“Our ethos is around storytelling, and diversity is important to create content. It’s more about the talent and who has the ideas. You need a

“We can’t serve global audiences or tell global stories across any screen unless we are thinking in a diverse way” Amanda Turnbull, Discovery

The panellists talked about the importance of having mentors and how such people played a crucial role in their own career development.

December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 35

PROWOMEN

“Women are producers of media content and not just consumers” Maysoun Odeh Gangat, Nisaa FM diverse range of people within your company, both men and women from different backgrounds and different nationalities, to be able to create content to feed audiences over a wide range,” she pointed out. “We are also creating content to reach a wider audience, not just women or just men. For us, building a team is about creating the best minds, and diversity is important to help us create that variety of content.”

For Gangat, a diverse team is synonymous with economic growth. She believes that when the other 50% of the population is involved, “one can aspire to have an economy that is dynamic”.

Zahra Zayat, Vice President, MENA at YuppTV, agreed, adding that “when companies bring women on board in executive roles, they

show that they value diversity of experience and that leads to the growth of the company and better numbers”.

Of course, creating that balance between personal and professional life does not come easy for most women.

Zayat, who hails from Lebanon, says women there “are still fighting for their rights” and have been criticised for trying to have a better life.

Noha Jadallah, Content and Editorial Manager at OSN, said that while she agrees with having both men and women in the industry, the model is somewhat different for this region.

“Regionally, I have felt a difference.

While the industry everywhere does have this demanding always-on culture, keeping a good work-life balance is much more difficult here. I used to feel self-conscious for leaving the office on time. If you are not able to finish your work on time, I have always believed that you are either inefficient or underresourced. Middle East society tends to be much more forgiving of men sacrificing time with family for work.”

Jadallah said that women need to

The executives agreed that diversity is important to driving a company’s growth, but highlighted that talent is also a priority.

36 | www.broadcastprome.com | December 2019

be empowered in the broadcast industry today so that they can be an inspiration for the next generation.

She pointed out that with the Saudi market opening up and the first large-scale number of women joining the workforce, if they are empowered, they will serve as a huge inspiration for generations to come.

Speaking about inspiration, Zayat pointed out that she was fortunate to have had a female mentor early on in her life, who continuously supported her through her youth and played a significant role in her success today.

Grant took this opportunity to state that the ratio of women to men studying in universities in the GCC is 60:40, but sadly that isn’t translating into the workspace.

“Education is not the challenge here; it seems to be the lack of opportunity. Stepping into the workplace and the step up the ladder seem to be the missing part. How do we counter that and is this where mentors come in?” she asked.

The panellists all agreed that mentors or older people had played a crucial role in helping them through their career, and some added that it was critical for women to support each other.

“I have been super lucky to have had both men and women support me through my career.

I think to a certain extent, you have to go out and find them.

You’re in charge of your own career,” commented Turnbull.

Griffiths commented that there are some great role female models in the UAE media, which inspires more women to aspire to reach those heights.

“Middle East society tends to be much more forgiving of men sacrificing time with family for work” Noha Jadallah, OSN

PROWOMEN

Jadallah, who grew up in New Zealand, said she was also fortunate to have a lot of role models: “After all, New Zealand was the first country in the world where women gained the right to vote. When I was growing up, we had Helen Clark as Prime Minister and now of course, we have Jacinda Ardern – the youngest person to hold office in New Zealand, who also gave birth during her term and even breastfed her baby in parliament. I was also very lucky to have worked with a number of amazing women in senior roles, who I looked up to and admired.”

Amanda Turnbull added that women are not being given much opportunity to take on managerlevel positions, and there are even fewer women at higher levels to promote. “It is really crucial how leaders model their behaviour. It is not a glass ceiling [in the media industry; rather, it is a broken rung at the bottom of the ladder.”

Clarifying that statement, Turnbull said more support must be given to women with the functional expertise to rise to managerial positions.

“It’s that time that you lose a lot of women to having families, and that ties into all this because you need flexible working hours.

Everybody in this room can do something to support those women. You can mentor and sponsor so they are at least getting onto the ladder,” she advised.

But she also added that things are changing.

“If you look at the statistics in the UAE, in 1990 there were 29% women in the workforce.

Today, it’s 42-43%. So you can see that things are changing. The question is how to speed it up.”

Maysoun Gangat elaborated: “Media is an important tool to breaking this ceiling and allowing women to move up to senior positions. When we started the radio station, it was all about social impact and that is why the content

“Women should have larger representation on boards” Zahra Zayat, YuppTV of the radio station is inspirational.

To bring about social change, the media serves a huge role in changing mindsets within the community.

Content helps to raise issues and challenge some taboos inside society.”

On the topic of content, Jadallah stated that in general, media is more consumed by women and therefore it was common to see more women in content roles but cautioned that with the changing landscape, women have to develop technical skills as well.

“It’s very important that we get more involved with setting out requirements that support how our content is being curated and displayed. The industry is changing, but our point of view is still key, and we must learn how to feed our views to the algorithms of tomorrow.”

The panellists unanimously agreed that as leaders in their field, they have often literally been the only woman in the room. Zahra Zayat cited an instance at a large event last February in Kuwait, when she went on stage to announce a new product only to discover that she was the only woman there.

Turnbull said that during her career, she has been in the same situation many times.

“I am often in a position where I am the only woman in the room. I have to make it clear to people in the room that

I’m not a note-taker, I’m not making the tea, I’m not the party planner, and most certainly not the mother. You just have to operate – be consistent, positive and clearly respectful, but you have to make that point.”

Grant concluded the discussion with one final query, asking if the question of diversity would tip things in favour of a woman when hiring talent.

Turnbull commented that “talent comes first… You need the diversity and certainly ensuring that you have balanced female representation on a shortlist is a good first step. But if you have the talent, Discovery will champion you and bring you the opportunity, irrespective of age or gender.”

Gangat stated that with Nisaa’s aim being to create jobs for women, the company’s agenda is to hire women if it can, though she admitted that she often has to hire men to take on technical roles, for want of female applicants.

Jadallah pointed out that some of the world’s best athletes would not be where they are today “if they were not plucked out of their environment, given the support and tools they needed to excel by those in positions of power”.

Zayat commented that it was very important to rotate people on boards and not allow anyone to occupy a board seat for too long.

“Enforcing turnover on board seats will help facilitate new blood and diversity. Women should have larger representation on boards.”

Griffiths added: “If you have talent, we will push you forward and develop you. We are about moving people forward and empowering them to become managers, and we see over the years that all the management team who are coming under the partners are mainly women and are the decisionmakers. They are managing the projects and are the creative force behind that content as well.” PRO

December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 37

PROCEOs

WHAT'S IN STORE

FOR MEDIA IN 2020?

Content consumption is at an all-time high, but advertising is at an all-time low and monetisation has become challenging. MENA leaders discussed how they are revisiting business models in a rapidly changing media environment

STRATEGY&

DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS

STARZPLAY

INTIGRAL

ZEE NETWORK

VIACOM INTERNATIONAL MEDIA NETWORKS

Karim Sarkis

Hamoud Al Rumayan

Amanda Turnbull

Manoj A Mathew

The CEO panel at the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit is in essence not just the culminating debate of the conference, but also the platform where regional market makers discuss how they have revisited their business models over the year, in a climate where the regional economics have changed forever.

Moderator Karim Sarkis, Partner, Entertainment and Media at Strategy&, has been known to ask challenging questions on this panel and has always managed to extract answers from those in the hot seat. Joining us this year as speakers were Amanda Turnbull, VP General Manager MEA at Discovery Communications; Danny Bates, CCO and co-founder of STARZPLAY; Hamoud Al Rumayan, CEO of Intigral; Manoj A Mathew, Territory Head, MENAPT, Zee Network; and Tracey Grant, VP of Content and Channels, VIMN ME. It was clear from the start of the discussion that the focus has shifted from the linear versus OTT debate to how all the

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Danny Bates

Tracey Grant

panellists are now incorporating linear and streaming platforms to distribute their content. It could be said that 2019 has been the year of more mature collaboration between media entities, to drive greater synergy and keep costs down.

As Zee’s Manoj Mathew pointed out, linear and OTT at the end of the day are just distribution platforms. “All of us on the panel are in essence, in the content business, whether as content producers, distributors or aggregators.

The good news is that content consumption has not fallen.

In fact, there is a huge increase in content consumption.”

He added that Zee’s two OTT launches – its Arabic and South Asian paid platforms – are doing very well in terms of content consumption and subscription numbers.

“Are they making money? Not yet. We are all continuing investment in our content from our linear revenues.”

Viacom’s Tracey Grant concurred that “the demand for quality content and exceptional storytelling has increased enormously”,

PROCEOs

The panellists agreed that collaboration, creating synergies to share content and distribution platforms, is the only way for everyone to make money.

and the biggest driver for that are the “many distribution platforms for the potentially paying subscriber”.

“You have to be fluid and flexible in how you get your content out there and to whom, and build an appetite for it. You have to ultimately be confident that people will consume what you’re pushing out to them, whether it is advertisers paying or subscribers subscribing. The first instance has to be the content you are delivering.”

Developing that argument further, Amanda Turnbull commented that the “traditional model of working with a few key exclusive partners in the region who paid a premium for our channels” has changed.

“If you are producing fabulous content that people want in some shape or form, then you’re in a good place. Clearly the monetisation is changing over time, the conversations and who we are having them with are changing. But as long as you’re in control of the content, and it’s your IP, you have a choice about what you do with it.”

She cited examples of how Discovery is going into very deep consumer verticals and giving people the opportunity, for instance, to make a recipe they have seen on a food channel by partnering with Alexa to get those ingredients to

“The good news is that content consumption has not fallen.

In fact, there is a huge increase in content consumption” Manoj A. Mathew, Zee Network their home from the local store; or in the case of Golf TV, learn from Tiger Woods through a series of exclusive videos that he and his caddie will create with the content network.

“We are creating a direct-to-consumer proposition, where you can watch and your passion can be enhanced because you can do something as a result.”

When Sarkis asked Intigral’s CEO Hamoud Al Rumayan if he agreed that OTT is just another platform for content distribution, he offered the Saudi perspective. With 70% of the population under the age of 30 and the Kingdom having just opened its doors to the media, KSA’s consumers are more receptive to adapting to new technology – unlike in mature markets, where traditional platforms are fairly well embedded, he stated.

Intigral, which launched its Jawwy TV OTT offering last year, has a distinct advantage in KSA as it is backed by local telco STC and enjoys a 60% market share in the Kingdom. With this, a content-hungry young audience

and KSA welcoming new ideas in line with Vision 2030, Intigral finds itself in the perfect place to “introduce a new platform and new content”, commented Al Rumayan.

And that’s what Intigral is doing. It is investing in local content, with 10 original productions in the pipeline for 2019, one of which is a feature film. Alongside this, it is building Jawwy TV up as a super aggregator and negotiating with all the major content providers, including Netflix, Amazon and Disney, to bring them to its platform. Intigral already has a rich library of content following partnerships with STARZPLAY and several local players.

“We are trying to cover the lack in the Saudi market for the youth and the content they need,” Al Rumayan pointed out.

Interestingly, it is not just the traditional players moving into the linear streaming space. We discovered that streaming service STARZPLAY has decided to add linear distribution to its package.

Confirming this, co-founder and CCO Danny Bates explained that consumer choice is not just driven by content, but also by experience.

“Previously, the customer could choose between free or a 500 AED linear service, but if the choice is

December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 39

PROCEOs

between free and 40 AED for linear, the choice is much easier. This is why SVOD services like us with our price point have the ability to be part of the consumer’s linear experience. Our aim for 2020 is to be able to consolidate the experience for the consumer in their home.”

Zee’s Mathew agreed with Bates that unlike in India, where public transport commutes are long and therefore entertainment is consumed on mobile phones, OTT content is mostly viewed on the big screen in the GCC. All the panellists agreed that the way forward is through multiple distribution points. In the case of Viacom, Grant commented that it recently explored a new avenue with the Nickelodeon Kids Awards event, which brought four times as many viewers to the Nickelodeon channel as any other programme on the channel so far.

“We are continually evolving and now, as much as we operate a traditional broadcast channel business, there is no one hard and fast answer on what model works. We are also expanding into event-based experiences.

We have great relationships with partners here through our content deals and have multiple ways of exploring business opportunities.”

To Grant’s point, Turnbull added that Discovery is hiring a consumer product person and is “having interesting conversations in the region about a science museum and various Discovery properties for location-based entertainment…

Essentially, we are looking at how we can monetise in an authentic and credible way on any platform.”

Speaking of monetisation, Sarkis asked the panellists if and when they hope to generate revenue from their digital ventures.

Turnbull said Fatafeat now makes 80% of its ad revenue from digital and social, rather than linear.

Mathew commented that 50% of

“[We have] acquired first windows to 60% of all Egyptian movies for six months for Jawwy subscribers” Hamoud Al Rumayan, Intigral Zee’s revenues come from advertising and the other 50% from subscription. “If we didn’t have that, it would be difficult to run our free-to-air products.”

Intigral CEO Al Rumayan said the company’s aim is to first aggregate the content and hit its subscriber numbers.

While its content already reaches audiences in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman via Jawwy TV Home (set-top box) and Jawwy TV (standalone app), Intigral’s mandate now is to penetrate the wider MENA region, he said. If this means cooperating with other telcos and players in other markets where STC does not have a foothold, then Initgral will go ahead and make those deals.

When Sarkis expressed scepticism about such collaborations, taking the example of Intigral’s current partnership with STARZPLAY and commenting that at some point it could potentially break down because they had conflicting interests, Bates said: “Collaboration, utilising your content and distribution together, is the only way all of us sat on this panel will make any money.”

Elaborating on the partnership with Intigral, he added: “I am not going to get exactly the same channels that Hamoud does. What I am going to do is bring

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products that I think fit in with my brand and my strategy but will also complement my partners and make sense through their distribution.

We complement each other. Our focus is on premium Hollywood content, while Initgral has all this great Arabic content. Together, we can offer a more rounded offering to the customer through the simple distribution methodology.”

Turnbull agreed, adding that the new ecosystem calls for experimentation and keeping an open mind to move between exclusive and non-exclusive deals to find the best place for each content.

She cited a collaborative deal Discovery did with Roya TV. “We create content together with Roya TV in Jordan in the food space, and then each of us decide what is the most valuable way to monetise it. We take pay-TV rights first, then they take an FTA window, and then we take a digital window and it seems to work for all of us. It is just easier to create content together.”

For a streaming service like STARZPLAY, Bates commented that having a mix of exclusive and popular content is important to the survival of any platform.

“Having a series like Vikings exclusively and building a following is very powerful to bring customers on board. But then we also have series like Friends or Grey’s Anatomy that are not exclusive to us but are the two top consumed shows on our platform. That is the beauty of the OTT world, where data combined with Google search trends help us discover what content people are after without relying on any agency to tell us that. One thing we know is that if you sit there with a library of old and non-exclusive content only, people are going to tire. You need to have variation and new exciting shows to keep people inspired, and for that you need to rely not just on research, but sometimes your gut instinct as well.”

Exploring each panellist’s content

PROCEOs

strategy further, Sarkis queried if Al Rumayan is going after the bread and butter of the traditional broadcasters by investing in first window rights to Arabic content, thereby creating conflict.

“Yes, we are competing with Rotana, MBC and other FTA. But we have also taken a mixed approach like the other panellists here and acquired first windows to 60% of all Egyptian movies for six months for Jawwy subscribers. After that, the content will go in sequence on different windows. In addition, Intigral produced over 10 different series for the Saudi market within a time span of nine months. There is a huge gap in this domain, and our audience wants that content.”

“We are continually evolving ... and there is no one hard and fast answer on what model works” Tracey Grant, VIMN Middle East

Al Rumayan shared an incident during Ramadan in 2018, when Intigral secured the rights to the latest season of a Rotana production titled Shabab El Bomb, targeted at 10-15-year-olds.

“We took the series on an exclusive basis for Ramadan and the month after the Holy Month. We were launching Jawwy as a platform then and were encouraging people to subscribe.

Concerned about the registration gate, I instructed my team to allow for 40,000 concurrent registrations. On the first day of Ramadan, our system crashed even before the Maghreb prayer because we were hit by a whopping 770,000 registrations. That is the power of that content. Now, we have acquired this series for the next four years.”

Intigral, however, went one step further to attract the age group that had grown up watching the Shahab El Bomb series and were now in their early 20s. To target them, Intigral hired the same actors and created a brand-new series called Galbat Jad, the brainchild of Intigral VP of Content Tony Saab. The media house produced and broadcast the series last Ramadan.

Each panel brought fresh numbers and news to the CEO panel.

“OTT is no longer about niche for mobile. It has become the main viewing experience in the home” Danny Bates, STARZPLAY Sarkis concluded by asking for some exclusive numbers.

Manoj Mathew said Zee’s South Asian platform, which soft launched in February 2019, now has in excess of 70,000 subscribers in the UAE, and is hoping to cross 100,000 subs in the next three months. In India, Zee has crossed 85m subscribers.

Bates stated that nearly 70% of STARZPLAY’s consumption happens on one of two big screens. “OTT is no longer about niche for mobile.

It has become the main viewing experience in the home. You are up against players like Netflix and YouTube, who bring a gold standard.

So when a consumer comes to your service, they expect you to be on a Samsung TV or an LG, and if you’re not, it’s an immediate reason for them to step away. So it was important to get that device ubiquity.”

Turnbull confirmed that Fatafeat has a digital and social footprint of 13m people, which the company is able to monetise.

Al Rumayan hinted at the possibility of securing country-wide rights instead of MENA-wide rights to programmes, without spillage. He said KSA is rebuilding its audience measurement programme and that Intigral is considering the introduction of advertisements on Jawwy TV. He concluded with a scoop that a “big development in the sports domain” is in the offing, implying that it will have an impact on sports broadcasting. “We will see broadcasting via DTH, OTT and more advanced methods ... a major participant is going to do a lot of things in the near future.” PRO

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PROAWARDS

CHAMPIONS

OF CHANGE Meet the MENA achievers who competed against 130-plus entries in 18 different categories and genres and emerged winners at the 2019 ASBU BroadcastPro Awards

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The BroadcastPro Awards reflect the growing impact and needs of digitisation and recognise the champions of the transformation pulling broadcasters in its wake. The event is twinned annually with our Summit, widely recognised as one of the year’s most comprehensive industry focal points and held in partnership with the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU), the only dynamic pan-Arab organisation involved in maintaining best practices in the field of broadcasting in the MENA region.

A big thank you to our judges this year: Abdulla Ahmed Albalooshi, Asst. Undersecretary of Technical & Technology Affairs, Information Affairs Authority, Bahrain; Hasan Sayed Hasan, MD of Master Media; Ines Jebali Gdoura, Asma Said and Feten Fradi of ASBU; Khaled Abu Ali of Mediacast International; Andrew Clemson, DoP, Dubai; and Vijaya Cherian, Editor of BroadcastPro Middle East.

For nine successful years, the ASBU BroadcastPro Awards has recognised excellence across a range of categories critical to the industry mix, from production and post to content and technical innovation - and most recently, the new media and OTT platforms.

While the evening gala has long been a diary-date of note for the industry’s stellar personalities, every award is underpinned by rigorous metrics and the presence of an expert judging panel – a professionalism attracting entries from across the MENA region and informing a broad range of categories. In previous years, this event has also served as a platform for the industry to make special announcements.

This year saw Fox Networks Group announce a brand new show titled Where is my Lamborghini? Guests were delighted to see a Lamborghini parked in the foyer of the Habtoor Grand and made the most of the photo opportunity.

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PROAWARDS

Broadcast Awards

ANIMATED WORK OF THE YEAR

Brq & Bana â&#x20AC;&#x201C; ZEEZ ZEEZâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; animated teenage detective series, Brq & Bana, stole hearts and minds alike. In a series of gripping adventures, the two protagonists venture into spooky houses, take on bicycle gangs and make crime-busting V-logs. The Saudi series is a rare example of regional animation - and sets new standards of sophisticated product placement in a series! Abdelrahim Suleiman (l), DG of ASBU presented the award to Abdulaziz Othman, Managing & Creative Director of Zeez Animation.

SPORTS INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR

Special Olympics The Special Olympics World Games Abu Dhabi 2019 was the largest sports and humanitarian event in the world, welcoming 7,000 athletes from 170 nations to participate in 24 Olympic-style sports. Abu Dhabi Media's broadcast coverage was remarkable - pulling no punches, its striking close-ups and competitive imagery were truly worthy of athletes of Determination. From left: Talal Sulaiman from LIVE HD and Ameera Al Muharrami of Special Olympics received the award from Jorge Simao, MD of Eurovision Services Middle East.

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PROAWARDS

Broadcast Awards

PRODUCTION HOUSE OF THE YEAR

Nomad

Nomad’s diverse and powerful portfolio is distinguished by striking creativity and a commitment to distinctive, personal portrayals. Whether the rigours of executive boxing in Fighting Fit, the Emirati lifestyle portrayals of Energy for Life, or the startling images of Dubai as the ultimate business hub in Beyond What’s Possible, this is exceptional, provocative viewing.

The Nomad team with their award.

OUTSTANDING OTT PRODUCTION OF THE YEAR

Zodiac - Viu

Viu’s Zodiac is an award-winning crime thriller series with a spectacular journey through emotive settings, often glitteringly referencing Ancient Egypt and Medieval Arabia. Extremely fastpaced, it was a worthy winner ironically pipping Viu’s other entry, Ana Sherry Dot Com, which tells the story of a young ambitious Egyptian woman, striving for independence. Samir Isbaih, VP Sales, ME and APAC, Pebble Beach Systems (third from left) presented the award to the Viu team.

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PROAWARDS

Broadcast Awards

DIGITAL STRATEGY OF THE YEAR

Tooli - Arabsat Pioneering a highly innovative partnership, Arabsat proved a worthy winner - moving out of its traditional space and launching a new generation IPTV service, available on all major platforms including iPhones, Android phones, Apple TV, and Android TV. The package allows users to share their experience via a ‘rating and commenting’ service.

Company reinvention at its finest.

Winners Abdullah Mohammed Al-Otaibi (l), VP & CTO of Digital Technology at Tooli and Wael Butti (r), CCO of Arabsat, with their award.

MENA TRENDSETTER OF THE YEAR

Sharjah Media City (Shams) and Art Format Lab Shams and Art Format Lab launched the region’s first-ever usergenerated movie initiative. It created a talent incubation programme, with a total of eight workshops given throughout the year. Launched in March 2019, it gathered 2,500 users and 32 film production teams on the digital platform. The Shams and Art Format Lab teams received the award from Chant Utukian (r), Senior Sales Manager, Shure.

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PROAWARDS

Broadcast Awards

FACTUAL ENTERTAINMENT OF THE YEAR

Reach for the Stars – Nat Geo Abu Dhabi / Fox Networks Group

The judges were enraptured as they watched Reach for the Stars - a documentary from Nat Geo Abu Dhabi/ Fox Networks Group. It shows in extraordinary detail the journey and dedication of the UAE’s first astronaut from vision and ambition to the rigours of enduring a rocket propelled by seven million pounds of thrust. Suhail Ahmed (r), CEO of One Diversified FZ LLC presented the award to the winners.

STREAMING SERVICE OF THE YEAR

YuppTV

A natural winner, YuppTV provides more than 300 TV channels, offered in 14 languages and boasts a mind-boggling 1.5 billion viewer minutes per month – with an average viewership of four hours per day. It was also positioned as the leading OTT platform and one-stop shop for all South Asian content within only two years.

Nicolas Pons (r), Vice President of Business Development, Middle East from VITEC presented the award to the YuppTV team.

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PROAWARDS

Broadcast Awards

BEST VIDEO INITIATIVE ON A SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM

Awaan â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Dubai Media Inc.

For Anta Online from Awaan, the figures speak for themselves: with a reach of 12m, 10m minutes viewed, and 3.6m one-minute video views. There are also no fewer than 81.7m three-second views - and perhaps the most striking figure of all relates to mid-summer returners: more than 1.9m across three weeks of August alone. The Awaan team pose for a photo with their award.

BROADCAST SERVICES PROVIDER OF THE YEAR

Twofour54

Whether it be a TV commercial or music video, or the latest Hollywood blockbuster, Twofour54's ability to handle a project of any scale comfortably is remarkable. Its complete range of both production and broadcast services including pre-production support to awardwinning studios, production support and teleport uplink makes it an award-winning service provider. The twofour54 team received their award from Stefan Breder (r), Owner and CEO of Broadcast Solutions Group.

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PROAWARDS

Broadcast Awards

BROADCASTPROME INNOVATIVE PROJECT OF THE YEAR

Toyota Saudi Select Mobile App - Blink Studios An amazing ‘holoportation’ technology from Blink Studios helped create the app. A Saudi consumer who wants to buy a car but does not want to go to the showroom can now see a three-dimensional view of the vehicle from the comfort of their home. Lea Badro Hamadeh (l), Partner/Producer, Blink Studios received the award from Laurent Mairet, Managing Partner, Broadcast Solutions Middle East.

RADIO INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR

Nisaa FM

Broadcasting with a cause…

Imagine a radio station that’s driving debates on gender and social issues across Palestine. That’s the brainchild of Maysoun Odeh Gangat - and her station, Nisaa Broadcasting Radio Company. The station uses the power of radio to create social change. It’s also the first radio station run by and for women in Palestine and the Middle East. Maysoun Odeh Gangat (l), Founder of Radio Nisaa received the award from Baher Al Zaher, MD Middle East, RCS MENA December 2019 | www.broadcastprome.com | 49

PROAWARDS

Editor's Choice Awards

OUTSTANDING INITIATIVES FROM A DISTRIBUTOR

Advanced Media Advanced Media has continuously innovated by bringing new brands to the market and also educating professionals through training programmes and workshops. More recently, the company launched two new showrooms, one in Dubai and another in Saudi Arabia. Special mention is due to their technologies and training, consistently raising production standards. The Advanced Media team received the award from Craig Newbury (r), Sales Director at Lawo.

OUTSTANDING LIVE EVENTS PRODUCTION

7 Production

7 Production has managed exceptional projects in the live events space all the way from Qatar and Saudi Arabia to Dubai - and across the world - this year. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the team behind major live events that kept us gripped to our seats - including the F1, Dubai Rugby Sevens, Dubai Music Week, the Dubai Tennis Champion-ships and unforgettably! - the Chanel Fashion Show. Rola Tabet (l), Partner, 7 Production received the award from Paul Wallis (r), International Director of Sales, The Entertainer.

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PROAWARDS

Editor's Choice Awards

OUTSTANDING CREATIVITY IN VIDEO PRODUCTION

SOCIALEYEZ

What better way to promote the Dubai Fitness Challenge than with a Parkour athlete able to leap any obstacle at any time in a video that features every single mode of RTA transport? No surprise that it received coverage across the UAE’s national press. No surprises, too, that the winner here for exceptional creativity in video production is SOCIALEYEZ. The SOCIALEYEZ team pose for a photo with their award.

TECH INNOVATION OF THE YEAR

Sponix Tech UAE-based Sponix has developed a software to create players’ POV shots from sports events. Its product output is the same as Intel’s True View solution outputs but does not rely on hardware. Instead, Sponix’s software applies algorithms and models to create a POV using only broadcast footage. As this technology doesn’t require any extra equipment, it can produce shots in virtually any stadium.

CEO Mohammad Ali Abbaspour (l) and Business Development Manager Mohsen Rajabiat (r) from Sponix Tech with their award.

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PROAWARDS

Editor's Choice Awards

BROADCAST PROJECT OF THE YEAR

Sky News Arabia A few months ago, BroadcastPro ME had the opportunity to visit Sky News Arabia's revamped broadcast facility in Abu Dhabi.

Not only was there an impressive suite of newsrooms, galleries, hi-tech studios and the like but a completely new Augmented Reality experience and virtual studio. A hugely impressive investment in technology from the news broadcaster. The Sky News Arabia team received the award from Fadi Constantine (r), Technical Sales Manager at Sennheiser.

WOMAN OF THE YEAR IN MENA BROADCAST

Zahra Zayat, YuppTV

In less than two years, Zahra Zayat launched YuppTV, a major new name in the region, positioning it as the leading OTT platform and one-stop shop for all South Asian content. As well as launching the business, rolling out the product, and striking deals, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also a powerful advocate for improving gender balance in the workplace, From left: Zahra Zayat, VP & Head of MENA, YuppTV received the award from Christophe Firth.

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PROAWARDS

Satellite Award

SPACE INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR

Orbital Space, Kuwait Back in the 1960s, only one country in the GCC was eyeing space opportunities - that country was Kuwait. But these achievements were short-lived, with the ground station being destroyed in the Iraqi invasion in 1990. Yet now, thanks to the singular efforts of Orbital Space in Kuwait, led by the remarkable Kuwaiti engineer Bassam Alfeeli, the dream is alive again.

Bassam Alfeeli (l), Founder and GM of Orbital Space received the award from Dr. Riyadh Najm.

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“The need to work smarter, with greater agility and flexibility, is now front and centre”

Going remote to deliver more live content Consumers are more content hungry than ever before, demanding content anytime, anywhere, on any screen – with stunning images. Around 600m people across 200 countries, including around 40m in North America alone, watched English Premier League football matches last year, and these figures are only set to rise. An IAB study shows that globally, more than two thirds of all people have live streamed videos in the last year, with 47% of those having increased their consumption over the previous year.

The need to work smarter, with greater agility and flexibility, is now front and centre. At-home or remote production capabilities, with only a small amount of equipment and staff required to be on location, are gaining popularity at a staggering rate.

At-home and remote production, in which only a small amount of equipment and staff is required to be on-location, are gaining popularity at a staggering rate owing to time and cost savings and the positive impact on the environment.

The industry’s transition to openstandard IP technology is accelerating the move to remote/at-home workflows and bringing the majority of live sports and event production infrastructure and workflows back to the home studio. Unlike SDI production environments, there is no long set-up period required and access to signals and services are instant; the same system can be spun up or down and reconfigured quickly and easily. In many instances, only

the on-site cameras and connectivity will need to move on to the next event location while the rest of the production workflow remains at the central studio. In cases where some additional kit is required at the event venue, with lighter IP technology flight sets on-site deployment can be done with less rack space and less cabling.

The biggest hurdle to the widespread adoption of at-home models is latency, which is typically introduced at the encoding or decoding stage or as a result of the contribution network determined by the distance between the production hub and remote venue. Signal round trip times across EMEA do not usually exceed 80ms, but for cross-Atlantic connections, they can quickly add up to about 100-150ms, which makes operations more challenging. Several productions and many tests have demonstrated, however, that for many production tasks, like switching video signals and matching cameras, delays up to 200ms are acceptable. Tolerance for replay is more challenging and highly dependant on the use case, as usually delays in the jog/shuttle of content and finding the right In-Points becomes challenging for the operator. Video return feeds, which provide everything from production monitoring, teleprompting and real-time confidence monitoring to bidirectional video for remote interviews, must also remain uninterrupted and subject to minimal latency so that productions can run smoothly.

Although we see more availability of higher network speeds, bandwidth remains the challenge for most of

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the remote production applications.

For instance, 100GbE is soon eaten up by just a couple of 4K UHD signals.

In the future, broadcasters and production companies will use even higher resolutions and camera angles that will put greater stress on the network and available bandwidth. Efficient compression solutions – JPEG2000ULL, JPEG-XS and H.265 – offer an attractive alternative. These options deliver ultra-low delay compression to the video signals, while leaving everything else in sync. Codecs enable reductions of the video data rates by up to 95% while guaranteeing high picture quality, but significantly reduce the requirement for bandwidth, which is especially scarce at the last mile.

Distributed production models are coming into the spotlight as the creative crew and directors want the flexibility to be on-site in cases where this approach can increase the production value. For example, this could involve having the director on location with only the vision mixer panel, while the mainframe, processing and rest of the crew remain in the production studio.

These models enable production teams to deploy processing and storage equipment at the venue on-site and operators and remote panels at the production hub. This has a low impact on bandwidth, as only the control and one multiviewer video signal needs to be transported on site. This type of “remote on a string” workflow enables the greatest flexibility for replay operators, technical directors and producers.

Larissa Goerner is Director of Advanced Live Solutions, Grass Valley.

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