Inspirational leadership

From a comment:

Could I suggest urgent new thread based on the following letter sent to all AMG staff today - maybe DMO readers can comment on the "unique story of this organisation"?

Dear All,

As you are all aware we are all witnessing the dawn of a Change. Markets are shifting and organizations are being called upon to reassess their businesses and drive their activity towards consumer needs.

As a group, we are not immune to the depth and severity of this situation that has been reflected in our daily lives as well as our business in their different shapes and forms. The current Global economic tides have forced us into a careful recalculation of our business decisions.

To address the challenges we face, now more than ever, we need to restructure our business and transform AMG into a results driven organisation, which values quality over quantity and is focused on accelerating its rate of growth. As a result, very difficult decisions, including Staffing, will have to be made today.

We want to remember the unique story of this organisation and how we have shown, within a short time, our innovative roots and strong vision.

To fully realize our potential, we will all need to make adjustments and compromises. I am confident that if we work together, as one team, we will come out of this difficult time in our history even stronger and be well placed to multiply our growth moving forward.

Thanks and regards,

Mohamed Almulla

Group Executive Director

Go for your lives.......

Is the death knell sounding for City 7?

From a reader:

Rumours are flying that City 7 is about to go bust. Would anyone notice if it did?

TV ads

By request from an anon commenter:

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TV advertising. first there was the Lacnor ad in which the young girl cuddles the juice carton like it was mammy and now there's one in which a mother struggling to comfort her baby finds the only way to do it is to put her KFC grease covered finger into the tot's mouth.

who approves this crap and is anyone else bothered by it?
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Turning the TV back on

We've been a bit overkill on the National, so back to TV. Scroll down this article: Bridging The Gulf.

The attempt to fuse Western talent and values with Arab control have not always been smooth in the media business. Al-Jazeera, the original beacon of a popular, autonomous media, owned by the Emir of Qatar, has faced serious challenges in the period since it launched its English-language rolling news channel. Its first year was dogged by clashes over terms and conditions. Jo Burgin, a former senior executive, is seeking £1 million in compensation, claiming that she was dismissed because she is a “white, Christian woman”.

Yesterday al-Jazeera English brought in Tony Burman as managing director, who had previously run CBC News in Canada, in an attempt to heal some of the rifts created under the previous regime. Nigel Parsons, the former managing director, was pushed upstairs to a role running “business acquisition and development”. For all the problems, al-Jazeera's output remains of high quality and there are no allegations of overt interference.

Nevertheless, with Gulf states pouring cash into media, outsiders believe that they have something to contribute. That thinking underlies the decision by the BBC World Service to launch an Arabic channel, because the BBC believes that it is able to offer an independent voice. But, whereas it might have had to battle before with censorship, now it has to battle with vibrant rivals for audience - a sign that a market for media is developing.

Have we got any Al Jazeerans reading who can give their perspective on the "rifts"? Enough ex-Dubai media are now working there. And anyone been hired from BBC Arabic? There used to be some ex-BBC Arabic staff working at MBC, are they planning to return?

TV and the Three Big Ds

I'm sick of papers, let's turn to TV. Here's something interesting, and I'll quote the whole thing for those too lazy "time poor" to click:

CNN ups presence in United Arab Emirates
Tuesday, December 11 2007, 10:52 GMT
By James Welsh, International Editor

CNN is to open a bureau with full broadcast and production facilities in Abu Dhabi, it was confirmed today.

The Abu Dhabi production base is part of an expansion of the network's newsgathering facilities in the United Arab Emirates. It will support current CNN bureaux in Baghdad, Beirut, Cario and Jerusalem and will complement CNN's existing base in Dubai.

"This is a major step forward for CNN as we ramp up our newsgathering capabilities around the world," said Tony Maddox, executive vice president and managing director of CNN International. "Besides, the United Arab Emirates is the perfect location for an operation of this kind both editorially and logistically. This announcement comes quickly on the heels of the details we recently released about additional resources in India, Korea and Japan, and in the coming weeks, we will announce new editorial operations in Africa and parts of Europe."

Wilf Dinnick, currently a correspondent stationed in the Middle East for ABC News, will join CNN and be based in Abu Dhabi. Samson Desta, formerly a supervising editor on CNN's International Desk in Atlanta, has been named bureau chief.

Who'd have thought it would be Dhabi that got the bureau, not Dubai? The shift has started. Can we expect to see Dhabi and Doha leading the media race in the future, with oil-poor Dubai trailing behind?

InTV OutTV

A reader is curious about the comings and goings at City7:

"It would appear that [a guy who was fired from radio then fired from City 7] is not the only recent loss of what was Dubai's only attempt at an independent local television station.

"Following his termination with immediate effect, it now appears a number of higher-ups have "jumped the proverbial ship" before it really and truly goes under. Anyone have the inside scoops?"

Any TV tarts out there willing to spill?

Women, but not TV editorial, for rent

Another anonymous submission:

"i was watching an American TV show and there was a young, impressionable girl in it who thought she had been discovered and was about become a modelling star. Her justification for the belief was that she had been booked do a 'photo shoot' in Dubai. Little did she know, her agent / manager / pimp had actually arranged for her to be a hooker for a couple of days.

"The plot was foiled by our undercover hero, who was told: 'The girls only model in America, but if you're going to the Middle East, I'll get them to do whatever you want'.

"Quite apart from this glowing travelogue, my favourite line was provided by the wide-eyed innocent girl, who said: 'I'm doing a shoot in Dubai. That's near Saudi Arabia'."

Whoops. The long arm of censorship doesn't stretch as far as cable channels in the US, then.

I'm pretty sure DTCM didn't sanction that particular mention of our fair city, and I'm not sure it's going to appear in the press clippings report at the month. But then again, if the TV crew had been hosted by a world-class airline and stayed in an iconic landmark hotel, perhaps things might have turned out differently ...

You can imagine the reworked script now. Obviously, no hooker activities involved, and the wide-eyed innocent would have said: "I'm doing a fashion shoot in Dubai. That's the tourism and business hub of the Middle East, formerly a sleepy pearl-fishing village, but now a glistening metropolis, with something for everyone, including a cheery little mascot called Modhesh!"

Bring back the Business Channel ....

There's a sentence I thought I would never utter, but faced with the banal offerings from Emirates News and City 7, it has left me with no option. Dubai is a city with global aspirations, yet its programming (in particular the news and business) is shameful.

I can't even bring myself to watch Emirates News any more, but I'm informed it is getting no better, despite the presence of newscaster Ramia Farrage, who has reached No.93 on Arabian Business' top 100 most powerful Arabs (on the basis of this, I'm not sure how she rates higher than the Qatar Airways' CEO, or even CNN's Hala Gorani).

And as for City 7: just three examples needed. That Woman's Show, which plunges to new depths ("the German carmaker, Skoda"); the weekend repeats of the weekday news programmes (news? current affairs?); and the superb bit of scheduling that puts an aerobics show on after midnight on a Thursday, when any exercise taking place in Dubai is likely to be of the drinking or horizonal variety.

Dubai TV's terrifying ad

A flash presentation of bloodshed, carnage and orgiastic violence would be less unsettling than this horror:




Does this make anyone want to turn on Dubai TV news? Or run for the hills/dunes?