“ Illegal IPTV providers are openly selling their hardware and services through social media.” – Sophie Moloney, OSN
from their existing studios in Dubai Media City. Its main DSC studio is used for MBC’ s important Morning Show and 9 o’ clock news broadcast.
Barnett remains the driving force for MBC. He joined in 2002( as COO) when it was a single TV( and a radio station) and has since taken the broadcaster to more than 20 channels and an estimated reach of 120m viewers. He was promoted to CEO in 2011. MBC’ s staff roster is now some 3,000 people, drawn from 65 nationalities.
At the recent Arabsat client forum, held in Salalah, Barnett was explaining how MBC was continuing to be tough on broadcast piracy:“ Piracy on satellite can be a big issue. Within a couple of months, there were 75 channels with pirated sports and movies. This was content we paid for and was being played for free on satellite channels. One of the reasons we are
so close to Arabsat is because we went to them and said we want to start a coalition to fight piracy, and asked if they would support us. It didn’ t take even 30 seconds for them to say yes. Arabsat has fought with us against this scourge for the past five years. In the last few months, we have taken 45 pirate channels off the air from 7-degrees West. For the first time as an industry, we’ re now clean.” PIRACY. Sophie Moloney, OSN chief legal officer, had earlier in 2017 showcased research showing IPTV piracy was growing at an alarming rate and fast becoming‘ normalised behaviour’ within the family home.“ Our industry faces a number of threats from illegal satellite distributors as well as from the emerging scourge of internet content piracy. The worrying thing is that illegal IPTV providers are openly selling their hardware and services through social media in the Middle East,” she added.
Interestingly, Barnett’ s previous highly critical 2015 comments on piracy were mostly targeted at the region’ s‘ virtual’ satellite operators – Noorsat being among those named then. The Dubai-based MENA Broadcast Anti-Piracy Coalition says it has successfully seen 30 Arabic and‘ Western’ regular pirate channels closed and a further 26 cut back on their theft of pirated material. These are all instances where channels steal the legitimate content – often sports or movies – owned by established broadcasters. Noorsat defended its position saying it would comply but that it had to pursue legal routes to close or suspend contracted broadcasters, and frequently those contracts were held via 3 rd party facility companies.
A meeting of the coalition at IBC restated its intention to remain vigilant and to expand its focus to IPTV and OTT pirated transmissions. Guillaume Forbin, OSN’ s head of platform and content security, unveiled research showing IPTV piracy was unfortunately still growing heavily. The anti-piracy organisation’ s web-site lists the infringing channels, mostly movie services. UHD. Progressive as he is, Barnett is bluntly pessimistic on the prospects for Ultra-HD in the region saying in October that there were no plans for 4K from MBC.“ There’ s no return on investment for 4K. I maintain it is a conspiracy by the engineers,” he told delegates to the Arabsat Salalah event. Barnett added that MBC was“ toying” with the opportunities presented by pay-TV.
One area that Barnett’ s MBC is firmly backing is on-line. Indeed, 2018 will see more MBC cash going into its web-based activity, and it makes perfect sense. A November 2017 report from Amman-based Arab Advisors Group showed that of 975 fully operational free-to-air channels broadcasting in October 2017 on regional satellites operated by Arabsat, Nilesat, Noorsat / Eutelsat, YahSat, Gulfsat and Es’ hail, Arab Advisors found 523 channels( 53.6 %) had an accompanying website. Many of them had enhanced portals that included a range of interactive services such as live streaming, search engines, online shopping, forums and advertising.
“ The results show that a majority of the 499 channels that have online presence lean more towards an enhanced online presence. Furthermore, 38.1 per cent of channels with an online presence generate online revenues through methods that include online advertisement and online shopping, among others,” said senior research analyst Hiba Al Atiyat.“ Almost 60.6 per cent of the satellite channels have online presence for promotional purposes only and do not aim at generating online revenues. Thirty-seven point three per cent of the channels of the channels that have online revenue generating
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22 EUROMEDIA