cover story_cover story 25/02/2016 18:37 Page 6
show or movie. If there’s a Court Order,
then we can act. There is no doubt,
however, that the wider region needs better
regulation,” he concluded.
APPETITE. Despite these challenges,
there’s no doubt that the region’s appetite
for TV shows zero chance of tailing off. New
channels pop up all the time (although
critics say just as many die away). Market
leaders such as OSN on the pay-TV side of
the equation and MBC in free-to-view
territory, also continue to add new
temptations. Not to be ignored is the
entrance onto the scene of OTT players.
Savvy broadcasters, again in the form of
OSN, MBC and carriage operators such as
Du, are also countering new entrants with
their own OTT offerings. Barnett says that
his operation is very serious about its digital
business and tapping into its massive digital
footprint with digital services Shahid.net,
Alarabiya.net and MBC.net. “Our various
digital platforms have 300 million followers
and this is something we can tap into.”
Boustany is also expanding his footprint,
and hints at a growing demand to simulcast
in both standard-def and HDTV – and
perhaps even higher definition one of these
days: “We have what we like to say is a good
problem, which is that our existing clients
are transitioning into high-definition. Right
now, we have about 25 per cent of our
channels in HD, but the broadcasters are
pushing very hard to move to HD and we
welcome this. We can handle this, and the
good thing is that the pressure is coming
right across our regions and is not
dependent on economic status but is
affecting all our clients wherever they are
based,” he noted.
WIN-WIN. “This is obviously good news
for us. One of the crazy problems is that
broadcasters cannot buy ordinary standard
definition equipment any more. Just about
every vendor can only supply HD
equipment, and there is no longer a cost
disadvantage in HD over SD. They are also
by and large shifting to MPEG-4, and some
of our markets will be making the move to
MPEG-4 and this will save a little
bandwidth but also allow them to adopt
HDTV. While the broadcaster enjoys a real
saving in bandwidth on a per channel basis
it also means they can contemplate
expansion. It really is a ‘win-win’ for
everyone,” he declared.
YahLive is already carrying multichannel services from the likes of MBC and
Al Jazeera/Jazeera Sports. But there’s
another, says Boustany: “The multi-channel
model is one that many broadcasters are
embracing. One of our main clients is a
major broadcaster called GEM, transmitting
in Farsi and Kurdish, and like MBC and Al-
Jazeera, is aggressively moving towards HD
across their multiple channels. But even
single-channel broadcasters are shifting to
HD. We can sense what is happening
because those who have not shifted are
asking us for prices for HD transmission.
They are asking us for our advice on the
technical needs, including uplin