Celebrating our roots

Last month, I had the privilege of travelling to Saudi Arabia to cover Saudi TV and Riyadh Radio’s 50th anniversary celebrations and was even more honoured to discover that I may have been the only foreign journalist at the event. As the biggest consumer of Arabic content, I believe the Kingdom is one of the most important players in the Middle East broadcast industry. While some may find its conservative culture restrictive, for me, it’s a welcome relief from the excesses elsewhere.

To appreciate how significant Saudi Arabia is to the broadcast industry, one needs to understand the magnitude of the projects undertaken in the country. For one, the capital invested by Saudi Arabia in its media is way more than the broadcast budgets put together by all of the GCC countries. Secondly, as the country is so large and has huge pockets of remote populations that need to receive television and radio in their respective homes, systems integrators and solution providers often have to think innovatively to address the media requirements of Saudi Broadcasting Corporation, the country’s state broadcaster.

It may be argued that so much investment is going into a country’s media that only broadcasts restricted content, which may be perceived as “boring” by outsiders. But as Saudi Broadcasting Corporation’s President Abdulrahman Al Hazza’a pointed out in an exclusive interview with us last month, Saudi Arabia lies “at the heart of the Islamic world … and we are very proud of that identity”, and while it poses some unique challenges, it also throws up huge opportunities to create innovative content that adheres to the country’s religious mandate while also entertaining its populace.

As always, we go that extra mile to bring you stories that no one else in this region brings. While this issue, therefore, celebrates Saudi TV, it is also an important issue for BroadcastPro ME as it is part of our own fourth anniversary celebrations.

We hope you will join us on May 20 at Rixos The Palm Dubai.