IBC witnesses sustained Middle East growth
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 This year’s International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam once again saw an increase in attendance, up by 2,000 on last year to 44,808 visitors. And despite the war in Lebanon, Middle East attendance was no exception, with visitor numbers from the region ticking up from 2.4 to 2.5 percent of the total.
Major manufactures scored significant Middle East deals at the show, reporting substantial growth both in terms of new installations and, as expected, a continuous stream of new broadcasters.
Broadcasting equipment giant Harris, for example cited a raft of new channel openings in Lebanon, Egypt and Libya among 15 new projects the American company had secured since launching its regional operation out of Dubai Media City at the beginning of this year.
“We have a growth of 500 percent this year,” said Said Bacho, Harris general manger for the Middle East, in reference to the hiring of five new staffers across the region. He said Harris had initiated 4 new projects at IBC alone and was planning on having a total of seven regional staff by year’s end to meet mounting demand.
New projects this year include two major deals estimated to be worth $3 million each; one a new playout center for Arabsat at Jordan Media City, the other a much-anticipated new channel launch from Libya. The new channel will be called 1/9 Media as part of a new broadcasting initiative that will reportedly be headed by Seif Al Islam Qaddafi, the son of Libyan President Muamar Qaddafi. The deal is undoubtedly one of the biggest broadcasting projects since the lifting of sanctions on the country in 2003.
According to Bacho other new deals for Harris in the last six months include FTV Arabia, Al Jarass, Kounouz TV, and Shahrazad—all in Lebanon; Gulf Sat, a new playout center in Kuwait, Al Waleed Bin Talal’s Al Resalah, Al Jazeera International in Qatar; four stations in Egypt, including the yet to be launched OTV, which is owned by the Orascom Telecom magnate Najib Sawiris, religious broadcaster Al Majid and new two stations for the Iraqi market, Al Rafidin and Atheer. Harris has also signed a deal worth approximately $1 million for Cham TV, the first new entrant in the Syrian market.
Bacho said one of his best selling items is the Inscriber RTX a real-time graphics system that allows instant display from live data feeds, a product that is quickly being snapped up by interactive channels that stream text messages and game applications. “We are selling ten units per month,” he said.
On the production side, Middle East firms are also generating major business for companies like video card and converter manufacture BlackMagic Design Inc. With high definition broadcasting on the horizon, regional production houses are increasingly acquiring dual-use equipment that can handle both HD and SD formats. “We sell our Multibridge Extreme hard into this market,” said BlackMagic’s Simon Hollingworth, “simply because of the product’s dual usage: 1) editing capture and playback HD/SD hardware with HD monitoring built-in, and 2) as a bidirectional analog to digital converter. Typically, this is being used by post-production houses through-out the region. We are also seeing growth in our DeckLink HD Extreme as part of future migration plans to HD.” Hollingsworth says his company’s sales in the Middle East have risen by 30 percent since last year.
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