Abu Dhabi opens a media hub for Western companies

Twenty years ago, Abu Dhabi's cultural cachet in the West was as a punch line in the cartoon ''Garfield.'' Today, backed with petrodollars, Abu Dhabi is fast becoming an international cultural hub and attracting American media companies. In early October, six companies announced that they were setting up shop there: CNN, the book publishers HarperCollins and Random House, the British Broadcasting Corp., The Financial Times and the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charity arm of the financial news service Thomson Reuters. Officials from these institutions joined officials in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates to announce they would take space on a new 200,000 square metre, or 2.2 million square foot, campus called the Abu Dhabi Media Zone, which the government is building for foreign media companies.

EMPG in US$125m joint venture with Dubai government

Barry O'Callaghan’s Education Media and Publishing Group (EMPG) is entering into a US$125 million venture with the government of Dubai to target the educational publishing sector in high-growth developing markets. EMPG International (EMPGI) will be 66.7 per cent owned by EMPG and 33.3 per cent owned by Istithmar World Capital, the alternative investment arm of Dubai World, which is owned by the government of Dubai.

Bloomsbury launches Qatar publishing house

Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, the British publisher of the blockbuster Harry Potter series, announced it had signed a £7.5 million (US$13.2 million) agreement with the Qatar Foundation to create a new publishing house in the Middle Eastern country. The new Doha-based house, which will be called Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, is designed to promote reading in the Middle East and cultivate new literary talent, Bloomsbury said. It will publish books in both English and Arabic for worldwide distribution.

Abu Dhabi to finance environmental films

Having used its largess to finance skyscrapers of record-breaking height and artificial islands, the oil-rich emirate Abu Dhabi is now putting some of that money toward a series of environmentally conscious films. The state-owned Abu Dhabi Media Company has announced that it will collaborate with National Geographic on as many as 15 movies that address humanity's relationship with the earth.

Interview: MENA to become global media hub

In an exclusive interview with Noozz, Julie Woods-Moss, Vice President BT Global Services, the UK-based telecoms operator’s multi-billion dollar internet-based worldwide networking service, explains why the Middle East is becoming the new growth region for the media industry and how it is using new technology to leapfrog the West with locations such as Cairo, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha becoming the region's new global media hubs.

National Geographic and Imagenation Abu Dhabi form joint venture finance feature films

National Geographic Entertainment and Imagenation Abu Dhabi will commit US$100 million for the production of 10 to 15 films over the next five years. The fund was announced by Tim Kelly, president of National Geographic Global Media, and Edward Borgerding, CEO of Imagenation Abu Dhabi, a wholly owned subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Media Company. National Geographic Entertainment, a division of National Geographic Global Media, will, in association with Imagenation Abu Dhabi, develop, produce, finance and acquire films that focus on people’s relationship to the world, their environment and each other. The films will be budgeted between US$5 million and US$60 million.