Sky News and the New Horizon of Arabia

Back in July I was invited to tour Sky News Arabia studios in Abu Dhabi, to be quite honest I was really impressed by the equipment and facilities they have, although I’m a digital guy but I always thought that people who work in TV stations enjoy the best working environment, it’s very busy and vibrant, 24/7, it doesn’t turn into a ghost town at 6pm!

The invitation was an attempt by Sky News to reach out to active bloggers and tweeps in the country, following the tour that was led by Nart Bouran, Head of Sky News Arabia, an open debat kicked off with different team members of the station, who were keen to listen to what can be the best digital practices that can help the Sky News Arabia to stand out.

Nart Bouran, Head of Sky News Arabia in a studio tour

Attention to tension
The Arab world is very rich in Oil, but it’s also very rich in news, even before the Arab Spring, a fact that enticed a lot of local and international players to venture into uncharted waters, with hidden agendas, or obvious ones. Countries like USA, England, China, France, Russia and Iran are present in the region through their own Arabic channels, but compared to their local rivals, Al-Jazeera (Qatar) and Al-Arabiya (Saudi Arabia), they are not that significant.

Al Jazeera is by far the strongest news channel in the region, perhaps the timing and the open financial support played an important role in their success, but personally I think the tone used by the Doha-based network boosted its image, Al-Jazeera managed to build an Anti-West, Pro-Arab image, although I believe they are not, they just tailor their news to suit the mentality of the vast majority. Al-Arabiya on the other hand managed to gain some momentum through its more-neutral attitude, the Saudi-owned Dubai-based station was launched 7 years after Al-Jazeera and doesn’t enjoy the same financial support as its Qatari rival but it seems to be catching up.

I’m not a fan of both Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya but I think Al-Jazeera is more professional, Al-Arabiya made few uncalled-for mistakes, and I’m not talking about core news, mistakes such as the “Microsoft launching Google Wave” statement to the news about the Dubai resident who paid AED1.1 Million to secure the first piece of the new iPad to the Gillette unbelievable baseball catch viral video that was aired on Al-Arabiya as if it was for real.

Sky News Arabia is the only news channel that was launched after the beginning of the revolutions in the region, soon it will be joined by Al-Arab channel, which is owned by Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, Fox News partner in the region. Such difficult times could be so risky to start a news channel but it can an opportunity as well, a new horizon brings new challenges.

Social Media Presence
Sky News Arabia has a long way to catch up with Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, social media is one of the key tools to do so, being active on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is needed but it takes time to expand your followers base. Below is a comparison between social media channels owned by these stations:

FACEBOOK: (only the official pages of the main brand, not including other pages like sports, economy.. etc.)
Sky News Arabia has more than 155 thousand fans compared to 2.1 million fans of Al-Arabiya and 3.5 million fans of Al-Jazeera (2.4M on Arabic page, 1.1M on the English)

TWITTER: (only the official accounts of the main brand, not including other accounts like sports, economy.. etc.)
Sky News Arabia has more than 40 thousands followers, compared to 1.28 million followers of Al-Arabiya and 3 million followers of Al-Jazeera (1.7m on the Arabic account, 1.3m on the English)

Both Sky News and Al-Arabiya use hashtags extensively, which is very important, unlike Al-Jazeera, which only uses them in English.

YOUTUBE: (only the official channel of the main brand, not including other channels like sports, economy.. etc.)
Sky News has more than 3,300 subscribers compared to more than 95,000 for Al-Arabiya and more than 467,000 for Al-Jazeera (267k for the English, 200k for the Arabic).

Sky News YouTube channel has generated close to 2.8 million views compared to almost 87 million for Al-Arabiya and close to 598 million for Al-Jazeera (395m for the English, 202m for the Arabic). Seems like English content is working for Al-Jazeera more than the Arabic.

All in all, I think Sky News Arabia has a good digital presence through a neat website and a collection of mobile apps, I also like their font both on-screen and on the website, I think it’s very nice and much more beautiful than the ones used by Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.

To end my post, I think Sky News Arabia is gaining some ground, but only time can tell how successful and independent they are, both Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya image was slightly damaged during the Arab Spring, which was and still a real test for the transparency of  news stations in the region.