Media focus shifts temporarily from Dubai to Abu Dhabi
Posted on 10 March 2010 with no comments from readers
The rather impressive Abu Dhabi 2010 Media Summit being staged this week in the UAE capital is an indication of just how far the focus of the media has shifted towards Abu Dhabi.
None other than News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch leads the stellar line-up of speakers at the three day event with strong representation from other global media groups. He has bought a nine per cent stake in the Saudi media conglomerate Rotana, and yesterday revealed his aim ‘to tap into Arab talent and ultimately produce original Arab content’.
Censorship call
At the same time Mr Murdoch urged Arab governments to ease censorship laws with the big carrot of jobs for the future. Perhaps somebody important will have been listening.
Mr Murdoch is opening his offices in the Abu Dhabi Media Park, alongside CNN and Thomson Reuters. Indeed, Abu Dhabi is likely to prove an easier platform for his media than Saudi Arabia.
Abu Dhabi has been making a big push to develop its local media, led by The National newspaper and supported by a wide range of subsidies for companies setting up in its media free zone. There has also been an associated rise in advertising spend.
Some smaller media-related firms have left the Dubai Media City for Abu Dhabi’s warm welcome. But the DMC is hardly emptying, as the problems finding a parking space bear witness, and a lot of the firms still moving in seem to be the marketing departments of large multinational companies.
Ironically enough these are the very advertising clients the media requires. And there are already complaints from some of the early residents of Abu Dhabi’s Media Park that the advertising pool in Abu Dhabi is rather small and that they have to spend all their time commuting back and forth to Dubai.
Too few stories
Journalists face a similar inconvenience. Abu Dhabi is never likely to provide a story on the scale of the Dubai debt crisis, for instance. Residents of Abu Dhabi might think that no bad thing but the media thrives on big stories as well as advertising dollars.
Is Mr Murdoch then backing the wrong horse? As the commercial hub city of the region the long-term future of the UAE media lies more in Dubai than Abu Dhabi both in terms of advertising spend and journalism.
Expect to see the Dubai media consolidate and fight back as the city bounces back from its recent financial crisis, and for the media to return from Abu Dhabi as the subsidies run out. And as Mr Murdoch has correctly noticed censorship remains a big issue in many Arab countries but not the UAE.
