Consultancy

DMA Media is setting up offices in the newly opened media zone in Abu Dhabi, twofour54. Its UAE subsidiary, DMA Middle East, will operate from there and is expecting a very busy year.

General Manager Chris O’Hearn said ‘the whole Gulf region is bursting with energy and needs world class media expertise. We’re in a good position to help to develop local talent in the region, and that’s very much our strategy.’ Chris added: ‘We believe the key to developing media is a healthy freelance market in the region, and twofour54 is working to make the UAE visa process much easier. There’s no shortage of good talent out there.’

Click here for Chris’ comments on the freelance visa situation in The National (the UAE’s leading English language newspaper).

DMA were the media partners for twofour54’s Intaj studios and production facilities, and have worked with the project since the very start. Now DMA is expanding its operations in the GCC and providing support and outsourced content services to broadcasters and companies throughout the Middle East.

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DMA Media supported the BBC World Service with the highly successful launch of Persian Television earlier this month.

The channel broadcasts news, current affairs and features programmes to more than 100 million Farsi speakers in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and other parts of the world.

DMA’s Rob Beynon was the Editorial Launch Director and nursed the project over a two-year period from its inception to its launch. Patrick Hubbard worked alongside him assisting with editorial and technical aspects of the channel.

The DMA team advised on everything from the planning and design of broadcast systems and studios, to recruitment of staff and programme line-ups.

Its modern, stylish look and authoritative content was greeted with an overwhelmingly positive reaction from Iranian viewers.

Abu Dhabi Media Company is building on the success of their English language newspaper. With help from DMA Media, Abu Dhabi TV has launched a daily TV news show based inside The National’s newsroom.

The ground-breaking programme covers all the day’s news and gives a preview of the following morning’s headlines. Presenter Crispin Thorold interviews the newspaper’s correspondents and a team of video journalists produce quick-turnaround packages.

The end result is a polished news magazine that combines quality journalism and stylish production.

The first edition hit the air on Sunday January 18, on time and on budget. The show was very well received DMA has been integral to the launch from inception to delivery.

We devised the original concept, delivered early pilots and helped ADTV find the right staff. Finally, we were on the ground to assist with the launch itself.

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DMA Media has been exploring the future of video news at NewsXchange 2008. At the conference in Valencia, DMA Media hosted a much-anticipated session that brought together entrepreneurs, analysts and regulators each with their own take on the future.

The session, called Hype, hope and headaches: making and selling digital news, generated plenty of debate. and also, perhaps, a clearer vision for the next ten years. The video above explains some of the key issues.

It used to be so simple: a single format, a small number of competitors and a straightforward relationship with the audience. The session heard that simplicity is rapidly evaporating. Television news operators now face a fragmenting audience, multiple distribution platforms and an increasing number of competitors. There are opportunities and there is optimism but there are also plenty of problems and uncertainties.

Session panellists included:

• Madhav Chinnappa; Head of Business Development, BBC Journalism;
• Beat Knecht, President & CEO, Zattoo;
• Jeff Jarvis, Professor of Journalism, City University of New York;
• Stewart Purvis, Partner, Content and Standards, OFCOM;
• Rob Beynon, CEO, DMA Media;
• Moderator: Robert Freeman, BBC Click

DMA’s Nat Low has produced two short films to be played at NewsXchange; the first questions how news companies will make money in the new digital news landscape and the second profiles an innovative video news service that has benefitted from cheap digital technology.