Meeting the challenge of setting up a media park

Abu Dhabi Creativity. It's a word which Tony Orsten, CEO of twofour54 - a media park set up by Abu Dhabi Media Zone Authority, uses a lot. His passion is all about creativity and content creation.

As the Chief Executive Officer at the Abu Dhabi Media Zone Authority, Orsten spoke at length to Gulf News on the concept, strategy and future goals of the authority.

Orsten inhales creation. He says: “Abu Dhabi has the opportunity of becoming a creative hub for the media as well as a creative hub for arts and culture."

And he is incredibly passionate about the project and believes he can make it work here as the “UAE has a fantastic government system, which is growing and developing I believe in five to 10 years time, there will be a broad media industry in Abu Dhabi and that's production companies, edit companies, hiring companies to hire out machinery, cameras and lights and content is made here not because it's cheaper than Cairo or Beirut, but because the quality of the content and the talent is here. That's why they'll like to come."

In his 50s, he belongs to a very young age group. "One of the things that make me very happy and that is, maybe, because I'm getting older is that I have the joy of bringing talented young people into the media world. I've done that for the last 20 years and it gives me a huge amount of pleasure. So wherever I go I try to get a mixture of people who have very little experience but have great spirit, people who have a little bit of experience and a little bit of confidence and then people who have a lot of experience and have a lot of confidence, mix them together and what you eventually get is a fantastic sort of movement from the young to the old of the talent and what we do is to bring a 100 per cent Arabs from all over the region and obviously from this part of the world too, Emiratis. We bring them in and they get on to this moving mass of talent as it moves towards the top."

Orsten's passion is people. "I love people … I like to see people do things that they did not think they could do … try things that they did not think they could try and succeed if they can … some don't succeed, but that's ok because you have to try and this is a great place to do this … some of the young people I've here, a lot of them Emiratis, have enormous amount of talent, it's untapped, they have not been able to use it yet. My job is to try to help them to do that and the media is an exciting way to do it, because it is growing, the internet is growing, everything is growing, so if you push people in, they will grow with it."

Concept and strategy

The concept and strategy of this project in Orsten's words … “This is an unusual thing to be doing … it is not normal … what we're doing is creating an entity where content can be created by Arabs for Arabs … so it is a content creation exercise. And the way we're going to do it is not by creating a media city and putting people in it … because Dubai does that very well indeed. This is a content creation … so this is to try and stimulate people in the Arab world to create content across radio, television, film … everything … all forms of transmission to create content. And this is something very close to Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan's heart - creating Abu Dhabi in the wonderful 2030 plan.

The cultural hub is important to this part of the world particularly Abu Dhabi. So this media initiative is very important to take that culture and try to move the message out as well as giving people within the region an opportunity to take that talent … and the talent here is very high but the skills need to be raised to the same level. To do this is with training … so one of the major pillars of what we're doing is a training academy which is key to taking people who want to be a camera man … who want to be a director … a producer, a journalist, a writer … whatever and giving them those skills so that they can come out of the training academy and take part in a media industry that we have to build here in Abu Dhabi. So the training is the first part.

Media partners

The next part is our media partners who we are bringing in from around the world and the region to come and join us here to be people who help to take what will be, we hope, lots of talented people with skills and give them job opportunities … people like CNN, BBC, and other major media companies who are going to set up here will take Arabs from the region to work with them and that is the key to what we're doing -- the relationship with the media partners.

There are two other aspects of what we're doing. One of them is an incubator, we call his incubator IBTiKAR, the Arabic term for creativity. And incubation is absolutely vital here to take business ideas as well as creative ideas and to give them an environment in which they can grow … in which they become something useful and become potentially businesses … and this incubator also runs alongside the training academy and alongside our partners and these three people – the partners, incubator and training – work together to try to give people who have talents an opportunity , and try and bring them into the opportunity of making television, making movies, making radio programs, writing newspapers, writing books.

So our partners come from all those areas … we have publishing partners … we have television partners … we have movie partners … we have training partners and all these people are part of what is going to be the Abu Dhabi Media Zone. So it is a different concept, of course, to other media zones in the area.

But does Orsten plan a UAE and Gulf centre of expertise or an off-shore licensing and publishing zone?

He says: "The whole point of what we're doing is to make this whole Arab-centric, so from the whole region, the Arab world, everything will be based on the Arab region. We will be bringing people from outside the Arab world with the expertise, but they will be part of that business, making sure that the local population and the population of the region become as skilled as possible.

Orsten also dreams of competing globally. "I think we could always dream … I want to be realistic … in a generation from now I think that competing globally is absolutely possible, but that is not our goal. Our goal is to give people the skills and create content here.

He declined to reveal the financial investments involved in the project. 'There is a budget, but we are not going to talk about it, because our investments are in people and not in money.

Time frame

About the time frame of the project, Orsten said: "We're building a temporary campus which will be completed in a few weeks near the Khalifa Park. Then the temporary campus will migrate to a media park, which is going to be in Mina Zayed are and that is between five to six years from now. So the temporary campus should be ready by the end of this year … and the bigger entity will happen in five years from now.

On whether the Media Park will be independent from the federal authorities, Orsten said the federal law in this country is very clear … the Abu Dhabi Media Zone will be part of the National Media Council's rules and regulations. And in terms of federal laws regarding companies, we will have our companies law … the companies will be set up within the media zone, and we will have a regulatory environment … if the business is a television company or a newspaper publisher, the media zone will be providing a licence, which will ultimately come through the National Media Council.

Orsten is looking forward to an area of 200,000 square metres to accommodate the Media Park in five years' time. The land will belong to the Media Zone Authority.

No financial sops

But the Abu Dhabi Media Zone will not offer any financial privileges to attract companies.

'The privilege is to be part of the growth of content creating in the region and the opportunity to take part in the increasing supply of advertising money that is coming into this whole part of the world. And we have a large team of experts from the region and from elsewhere to help them set up their businesses. But the financial side will come from them or they can go through our incubator.

Other facilities

Speaking of other facilities planned, Orsten said the Media Park will build production studios and post production suites, transmission services (Teleport Uplink and Downlink, satellite service provider, Play-Out Centre) telecommunication and IT services and immigration and relocation services, a big media network.

Orsten believes the most important thing about movie production is writing a script. “So we are here to help people write good scripts that can get financed. Production can be done depending on what the studio requirements are. It could be done here … we'll have studios here which will be up to 600 metres, which are not huge. But we could go to Dubai or we could go anywhere … the point is to create the talents to write the script, get them financed and make them into movies or television or radio or books … that's what it about.

Free zone status

Orsten is happy with the media regulations in the UAE. 'We have a free zone status … so the company law that we are creating is very much average for the West as far as I can see … there is nothing restrictive.

“The UAE is 36, 37 years old … it's a young nation and the nation has a fantastic government system, which is also growing and developing … we have a regulatory system within our zone … and we're working very closely with the National Media Council at both local and federal levels to make sure the laws that surrounds publishing, television and media are as realistic as possible and we're getting a lot of cooperation. I've seen the draft media law … and we're helping the government to get the best media law that's possible. We are in the process of suggesting changes into the law to achieve this end.

Opportunity

Orsten is not afraid of the regulations here "because we think there's so much opportunity here in the Abu Dhabi Media Zone. We're bringing in partners that we trust … we are creating a training academy for Arabs … we are providing incentives through our incubator and we've studio facilities … and the people we're bringing into the zone and we're thinking of the right people to give them the opportunity to create content … so we think there will be no issue in regulations because these people already know the Arab world, they understand the Arab world … it is not as if we're bringing people from outside who will then accidentally do something wrong. Whatever measures taken by the authorities can be seen as good, bad or you don't care. Our job is not to have these three options. Our job is to try and educate people who are in our media zone into understanding what works in this country and what doesn't, on the one hand. And on the other hand, is to work with the government and the National Media Council to make them aware of what we believe should be the way forward.

Views on censorship

Orsten has an interesting view of censorship. "People tend to lump everything that stops people from doing something creatively as censorship. And I don't think you can do that. I think that there is cultural awareness here. So nudity and all sorts of things we know … that's not censorship … that's cultural sensitivities … but people call it censorship. People say in the outside world you cannot show nudity in the Arab world and you cannot show this, you cannot show that, you cannot do that. It's cultural sensitivity. This is a different culture to the West … why should it be the same … and personally, I don't believe it should.

In terms of members of the Royal family making judgments … it is their country … now it's our job to try and persuade the Federal Council [of ministers] and the National Media Council to look at these sort of incidents and try to be more rational about them if they can … if that works, I will be delighted. In the UK we have Ofcom [the independent regulator and competition authority for the communication industries in the UK], which is a fantastic body … there all these sorts of issues happen much more regularly than they do here. And it's very interesting if you want to actually compare some of the regulator bodies outside and regulator bodies here and their interference or censorship as you call it.

On coordination with other educational and training academies, Orsten said: "We have our team out at the universities, because one of the things we want to do is to take a certain amount of the graduates and try to match them up with some vocational training, which we're providing to try and take them to real jobs in the real media.

I believe in five to 10 years time, there will be a broad media industry in Abu Dhabi and that's production companies, edit companies, hiring companies to hire out machinery, cameras and lights and content is made here not because it's cheaper than Cairo or Beirut, but because the quality of the content and the talent is here. That's why they'll like to come.

Like London, which is the most expensive to make anything anywhere, but all of the talents is in London because they like to be there and because there are things that happen. That's our view. Abu Dhabi has the opportunity of becoming a creative hub for media as well as a creative hub for arts and culture.

Challenge

The most difficult challenge Orsten has faced is to explain to people what "we're trying to do. It is not easy … it is not building a new building … it is not building a new city … it is not building a new car … it is building a creative environment and how to describe that. So that's the hardest thing I had to do. How do you explain it without going on for half an hour.

The easiest challenge he has faced was getting along with Emiratis. “I had little knowledge of the Arab world. So I came with typical western misconceptions, I told Shaikh Mohammad [Bin Zayed] that what I've found is that the Arabs, particularly Emiratis are the most friendly, welcoming and having a great sense of humour. And to me as an Englishman, you know our crazy sense of humour, I am able to sit with the people in the government of this country and laugh with them. I'm able to work with my colleagues here and I found everybody very welcoming, very open and very charming. And that to me as a Western is a fantastic revelation.

Orsten is incredibly passionate about the project and believes he can make it work. “This is for me an opportunity to give something back. Certainly, I can give something back and I can give it back to people who seem to love the idea."

On how long will it take him to do so, Orsten said: "My job is to get myself out of the job. My job is to find people beneath me who are going to come and take my job, because they're talented, because they're passionate, because they can do it. So this could take a month, a year, or five years … I really don't know.

Orsten's biography

Tony Orsten is Chief Executive Officer at the Abu Dhabi Media Zone Authority.

In this role, Orsten provides strategic leadership for the business in order to deliver on its mission of creating an ecosystem that will allow the content creation industry to flourish in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Orsten has more than 30 years' experience in the UK and international creative content industry. He is an academy award winning television director, channel executive and innovative programming expert.

At London Weekend Television, he won his first academy award with Network 7, a breakthrough TV format which put ‘serious' television back on the agenda for the youth audience.

Orsten joined the Abu Dhabi Media Authority in December 2007, taking a major role in the Abu Dhabi Government's initiative to create a media and content creation industry in the Arab region.

Prior to joining ADMZ, Orsten created, developed and launched successful television products and entertainment channels for Paramount Pictures Inc across Europe in Spain, Italy, Poland and in the free TV market of Germany, which serves 34 million homes.

In September 2006, Orsten joined the founders of Skype to launch Joost, the world's first broadcast-quality television platform on the Internet. He led the UK content team from the Joost UK London offices.

Previously, Orsten was the CEO of MTV Networks International's portfolio of entertainment channels including Paramount Comedy UK and Paramount Comedy España.

Orsten holds a degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from the University of Manchester in the UK.