MidEast media | Is Dubai losing the media battle against KSA?
Dubai is constantly branding itself as the business hub of the Middle East with struggling attempts to gain a leading position globally through attracting major international players to invest in city and even move their business to Dubai. No doubt the city succeeded to position itself as the leading player in this region and to acquire international corporations and famous buildings in USA & Europe, but does this apply on the media?
One TV is an English-language entertainment TV station based in Dubai that is struggling to compete with MBC Group’s portfolio of English-language entertainment channels; MBC2 & MBC4. Leading TV stations are Saudi, Lebanese, Egyptian & Qatari owned and UAE is still unable to compete with those countries.
Qatar owns AlJazeera, Saudi Arabia owns MBC Group (MBC, AlArabiya, MBC2, MBC4 and MBC3) in addition to Rotana network of entertainment channels, while Lebanon owns two leading TV stations Future TV and LBC, and finally Egyptians with Melody network.
One TV strategy was to liaise itself with Dubai the city, “Dubai home of One” was introduce on the station more often to benefit of Dubai’s awareness among Arabs, and even more the station recently re-branded to “Dubai One”, but is this going to help One TV to enhance its position? Dubai official TV which was so awful re-branded and it’s much better but yet is not able to locate itself on top despite all shows and exclusive rights of major programs.
TV stations in “The Forbes Arabia Top 40 Arab Brands list.”
1. AlJazeera (Qatar)
4. AlArabiya (Saudi Arabia)
14. LBC (Lebanon)
16. Rotana (Saudi Arabia)
17. Future TV (Lebanon)
33. Melody (Egypt)
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 26th, 2006 at 11:11 am and is filed under Marketing, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on December 26, 2006 at 5:00 pm Adel Najeh wrote:
KSA doesn’t host free media..so they lose !
on December 27, 2006 at 9:02 am Samer Marzouq wrote:
Adel what do you mean by free media?
on December 29, 2006 at 11:30 pm Yabco wrote:
Me think that dubai and ksa both have money,so it is not a problem here or there , but as for Dubai the money will be under governement control not as for the Ksa where free investements are there to progress into more than govermental issues,i mean rit?!
on December 30, 2006 at 11:07 pm Samer Marzouq wrote:
Well Omar I believe its the contrary, UAE and specially Dubai encourages investments and that probably one of the main reasons of its success, but what I’m saying is that Dubai till now didn’t present any top TV station such as MBC group or AlJazeera, not even publication such as Asharq AlAwsat or AlHayat.
Media wise Dubai still not in control, even its the media hub as well as for business but I’m talking about UAE-owned TV stations.