Al Mashhad goes live with edgy content, immersive experiences and out-of-the-box digital initiatives.
I hope all of you have had a great start to the New Year. Last year, behind a hoarding in Dubai Studio City, just across the street from our office, there was a lot of conjecture about the TV station that was in the making. From the name of the channel to who owned it to the reason behind its launch, many stood on the other side of the road and speculated.
In recent months, there has been more clarity on the channel, and last month I had the pleasure of touring Al Mashhad’s new facility. Some old faces and some new, the channel’s management is keen to woo younger audiences with more immersive storytelling and powerful talk shows. Impressively, they boast a hybrid technical infrastructure that accommodates all the buzz words we have heard in recent times – 4K, IP, cloud, AR, VR, mixed realities, Unreal Engine and what have you. But their tech head Srinivas Kuppa cautions not to get carried away by those terms or those technologies. He says he has been incredibly cautious about these technologies, only including them where they are deemed useful.
Al Mashhad is not done yet. As Kuppa said: “This is the beginning of Al Mashhad’s dream. More is yet to come.”
And that’s also true for the rest of the region. There are several new facilities coming up, and we are delighted to bring you those projects as they reach completion.
In the meantime, I have been attempting to bring more women to the fore and to that end, BroadcastPro ME has decided to host a Women in Media conference in September 2023. While there are a considerable number of women within the content and production sector, there are barely a handful on the tech side and I have enlisted the support of the industry to identify some of them and bring them to the conference. For those of you reading this, I welcome names from you as well. We also have two virtual conferences coming up on sports and tech in March and June respectively. This is your chance to register.
