Early this year, we made a conscious decision to ferret out women leaders in media from across the Middle East and Africa and write their stories.
Early this year, we made a conscious decision to ferret out women leaders in media from across the Middle East and Africa and write their stories. Only when we made this conscious search did we start discovering a lot of hidden talent out there. In fact, some of these talented people had been in our own backyard, and we hadn’t met them until now.
This issue is testimony to that search. We highlight three outstanding women in MENA media, operating in three different spaces. Zahra Zayat, who heads YuppTV, a relatively new entrant in the MENA OTT space targeting South Asians; Egyptian filmmaker Nada Riyadh, who had to temporarily fold up her film project due to resistance, but held on to her dream and eventually made it to Cannes; and Pauline Hunter, Senior Manager EPG Broadcast Systems at OSN, one of a handful of female engineers we have come across in the industry. In fact, Pauline is the first female engineer we have interviewed in BroadcastPro Middle East.
The IBC issue is always one of our most celebrated annual editions, and while the region is in holiday mode during the July-August season, the BroadcastPro team works doubly hard to scan the market and bring you exclusive news of installations, initiatives and productions you won’t read about anywhere else. While it’s difficult to mention all of them here, I’m proud to say that we have a number of stories from Egypt this time, from how the country pulled off the coverage of the Africa Cup of Nations tournament this summer — with 4K production to boot — to the innovative Deaf Film Lab initiative, which empowers deaf Egyptian youth to make films, and a report on how Egyptian cinema can potentially rise to its former glory again.
We have always had a strong tech lineup and this issue packs a punch with reviews of new products from industry professionals; discussions from the market on esports, cloud, AR and VR, as well as some of the new launches we will see in Amsterdam. The BroadcastPro team will be there, armed with one of our best issues ever. We hope you enjoy reading it. See you at the show.
