Throughout history, research has proved that the media landscape reacts to “a unique combination of innovative technology and its swift mass adoption after a crisis.” (Bhandari, 2020) For example, newspapers came to connect people during World War 1 with feature films and radio too by the 1800s. For this instance, the media industry has always proved its ability to “see beyond times” and ease the flow of information in times of a worldwide pandemic.
Covid - 19 pandemic, one of the worst pandemics in history, has affected our lives in the Arab world starting from March 2020. By that time, fake and misleading news have been circulating. However, televisions (Linear Media) were able to manage to get back on track with credible sources to spread information and entertain people during their emotional and mental breakdown. (Bhandari, 2020)
MBC Group, “is the largest media company in the Middle East & North Africa region that enriches people’s lives through information, interaction and entertainment.” (About mbc group - mbc.net - english) Due to lockdown, MBC members had to find a solution to shift 90% of its employees to work from home. (mbc, 2020) They had to find new revenue and re-engineer the way that they circulate time-sensitive news and produce content without the use of big complex reliable equipment that allowed them to broadcast for years.
On the other hand, the lockdown has led MBC Group to foster in the digital media landscape by relaunching a new Video on Demand - (Shahid VIP) and new partnerships with Facebook. In this research paper, we will be discussing the effects of Covid - 19 in terms of problems and opportunities that will allow MBC Group to compete with leading international media organizations. Definitely with identifying the stakeholders, recommendations, alternatives, and further minor details.
MBC Group sudden problems turned into greater opportunities post Covid - 19 lockdown.
With any new occurring situation, major issues arose. Some managers seek to find problems and plan for them ahead while others are capable of solving them when occurring. The Covid - 19 pandemic has taught many managers how to solve issues in an uncertain environment. (Schermerhorn & Bachrach, 2015) Digitizing was not a short-run goal to many, but the lockdown has pressured organizations to find eligible alternatives to solve the resulting problem.
By March 2020, people in the United Arab Emirates had been in lockdown. As a result, MBC Group had to shift 90% of their employees to work remotely from home to produce media content. Without any notice, MBC had to prepare the office for the other 10% to work in a safe environment. (mbc, 2020) The mentioned preparations add expenses for the organization. At the same time, the revenue from advertisements has declined due to the closure of businesses worldwide. All that happened, while the “digital engineering was limited to the far end of the value chain - in transmission and consumption.” (Bhandari, 2020) Knowing that, at the beginning of the situation, transmitting content between creators and broadcasters was challenging and time-consuming. Likewise, one of the main impacts of Covid - 19 is the “lack of fresh content,” (Bhandari, 2020) as many series that were on set shooting for Ramadan 2020 stopped, this led broadcasters to rescreen old content. Was this a major problem? Well, according to the media psychologist, Pamela Rutledge, “We’re craving predictability”. (Why we can't stop bingeing old shows during the pandemic) With all the uncertainty, people are exhausted and want shows like “FRIENDS” or any other series to binge-watch old shows when quarantined.
Facing those problems, MBC Group has taken the initiatives to enhance their platform through:
Having at-home segments for the #Stay_At_Home campaign that resulted by April 4th, 2020, 20 million hours of content consumed in KSA only across all of its platforms. (Al Arabiya English, 2021) (Appendix 1) The growing audience base has felt the connection that MBC tried to achieve without fearing people criticizing the production quality. The campaign has also drawn a massive audience to the first Saudi soap opera, “Al Meerath” that broke records and increased by 24% in reach from February 1st to 4th of April, 2020 according to MBC primary research. (Staff, 2020) (Appendix 2)
A major opportunity MBC took advantage of is relaunching in January 2020, Shahid VIP that saw a surge in viewing rates due to series of lockdowns worldwide. Also, in that month they announced a partnership with Disney and Fox. This partnership widened the scope and added 3,000 additional hours of entertainment to the streaming platform. (Al Arabiya English, 2020) Which in return widened Shahid’s reach up to 60% of new international users who came from the US and Canada, while the UK, Australia, France, Sweden, and other parts of Europe attracted sizable audiences. (Al Arabiya English, 2021)
To develop content for social media, which is the era's most successful platform, MBC Group has inked a content partnership with Facebook MENA for boosting the share of more than 20,000 videos such as previews, behind-the-scenes snippets, and more from MBC Group shows. As well, the one-year agreement will also include MBC’s Ramadan line-up for 2021 that will feature 400 pieces of exclusive content. (Layton, 2020)
The importance of those problems/opportunities that should be taken into consideration
All the mentioned problems and opportunities should be taken into considerations because what’s challenging is that there are plenty of alternatives, so MBC has to create content remotely and this adds a new urgent burden of teaching employees new skills to be able to film their segments from home. As a result of this various location production, it is crucial to invest in ushering a digital value chain throughout different departments so that it would be easy to create, aggregate, and distribute huge high-quality files as fast as it was when MBC produced them in their studios. To add to this, the partnerships that MBC has done to integrate third-party content to their library enhance the scope they should meet in terms of audience preferences and this is the main fuel to get more and more views. (Bhandari, 2020) Regarding the problem of declining advertising revenues, “Pre-rolls, in-stream, and post-roll ads have already proven their effectiveness in increasing the monetization for distributors.” Especially when they are inside VOD which Shahid could benefit from. Not to forget that social media has played a huge role in reaching more audiences as “MBC Group scores top 10 spots for global social media views” with 2.8 billion views on Facebook only. (LAKHPATWALA, 2020) (Appendix 3)
Despite all that, working in media means working closely with someone else. Abiding by the social distance while pressured in the newsroom, is one of the hardest ways that media people had to adapt to it overnight. New equipment had to be bought to stop the usage of the same headphones, earpieces, keyboards, and much more. While some journalists were stuck and unable to get back to the country they have to cover news that is why it was challenging and media outlets had to use content that citizens might have captured. This means they need to widen their networks. For example, another emerging media outlet has created an app that connects people who are interested in writing stories from anywhere even if they are not journalists.
Finally, MBC Group holds social responsibility by being a leading media outlet representing the pan Arab as in an interview for Arab news, the chief executive officer of MBC GROUP, Marc Antoine d’Halluin, said that: “We like to believe that we are content innovators showing openness and tolerance, and I think television, and media in general, play a key role in showing important, positive aspects and society evolutions in the MENA region, so we have the intention of keeping that editorial line.” (Ahmad, 2020) Alone this quotation shows that they see potential and MBC is eager to complete evolving in terms of adopting various media innovations which work well with “Emirates Blockchain Strategy 2021” that aims at advancing technology and “transfer 50 percent of government transactions into the blockchain platform by 2021” to use the capital they have efficiently. (Itu, 2020)
Stakeholders at MBC Group by 2021
The alternatives of MBC Group and MBC Shahid
The privately-owned MBC Group competes with 3 other public television broadcasting services and media and entertainment services, “Intermedia Capital”, “MNC Vision”, “Media Capital” and the subsidiary, “Sony Pictures Entertainment”. (Craft, 2021) On the VOD side, Shahid has many competitors like Netflix, APPLE TV +, AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, STARZPLAY ARABIA, OSN (PREVIOUSLY WAVO), ICFLIX, and EROS NOW. (Bayut)
Steps to resolve the problems or to take advantage of the opportunities
The emergence of new formats of media platforms is key to solve the problem regarding the lack of fresh content, as creating a new interactive platform that can generate the media’s old content into something new could be a fast way to solve this issue. Today “Hyperlocal” is an emerging concept especially for the fact that people are attached to news. (Bhandari, 2020) MBC could create an app that fact checks most of the circulating news, or use Shahid to air virtual music live shows such as the 3D concert that Maya Diab has done to enhance the advertising or Shahid’s platform. Also, locally produced series could be a great choice with international consultants to make sure that quality is guaranteed. As for limiting the expenses, MBC could produce an in-house creation instead of buying the rights to use international tv formats like "The Voice" and much more.
MGMT 201 helps in understanding the mentioned problems and opportunities
The most important concept is that organizations should act as Open systems to interact with their Macro, Micro, and internal environments to be able to execute the strategic management process that evaluates an organization's current state, scan the environment, formulate strategy and execute those concepts which are crucial to MBC to survive during the lockdown and take advantage of widening their media presence, digitizing their content and partnering with international organizations. Definitely, Mintzberg's managerial roles allowed us to understand the importance of clever MBC managers who monitored, disseminated, allocated resources, and took the risk of investing in new projects in an “uncertain environment” that lacks a lot of information. This shows that MBC managers are “problem seekers” and proactive in anticipating problems and opportunities. (Schermerhorn & Bachrach, 2015)
Other topics to be learned in MGMT 201
As a result of this research, I have seen that major creations of new and innovative ideas occur after any crisis. So studying how to manage a crisis? How should an urgent problem be classified? How to prioritize solving problems wisely? What can be seen as a potential opportunity to take advantage of? What opportunities should be dropped? Those are all important aspects of management especially in the media industry, even though MBC is a centralized organization; however, creativity requires self-management. As well as, to look at the quality vs. adaptability concept to know when can we lessen our attention on one of them while focusing on the other? Is it manageable to adapt and produce something knowing that the quality may differ a bit? Will this get us closer to consumers and allow us to fulfill our social responsibility as an organization or not?
Courses at AUD helped in tackling the mentioned problems and opportunities
Studying at Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Communication at the American University in Dubai and having Ali Jaber as our Dean and as the Group TV Director of MBC, has helped us a lot; as we started tackling this problem in COMM222: Multiplatform Storytelling course where we produced tv reports during the lockdown. We have also set our news studio at home and filmed segments from home when taking JOUR324: Broadcast Journalism. Finally, in JOUR302: Newsroom Management and Decision Making, we were able to run MBRSC Post online and had the opportunity to cover worldwide events and real-time events as journalists that face all the obstacles posed by the Covid - 19 pandemic in terms of media accreditations to events.
Key Recommendations for MBC Group stakeholders
Recommendations for the organization in general: Cut costs through rationalizing the amount of money MBC pays to air shows produced by other production houses as all organizations are trying to survive in this new emerging weak economy. Produce more in-house content that works on improving the operational efficiency so that resources are controlled well. While managers should monitor and disseminate data regarding “new consumer engagement and consumption preferences.” Seize the opportunity that people are eager to watch something new and there is a “larger digital presence”. Furthermore, “develop new partnerships and invest in the areas with highest potential” such as Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR & VR). On the other hand, employees could “improve content discovery” by allowing the MBC audience to get the chance to produce content that could be screened on shows like “Sabah Al Kheir ya Arab” to get more ratings in terms of views and fulfill the social responsibility of shows that reflect the society. From the customer/audience's end, they should beware of misleading news and facts that are circulating about Covid – 19 and other news as it is hard for media outlets to correct them and fact check before re-sharing any news. Also, the government could support privately-owned media outlets in terms of revenue, due to the decline of advertisements, by innovating ways of commercial expertise that will act as a new revenue stream to the media organization. (Capgemini, 2020)
According to Mordor Intelligence, “The Middle East Media and Entertainment Market” is expected to grow by 2026 approximately 12.79% of CAGR. (Mordor Intelligence) Knowing that the MBC group must seize the opportunities they have and solve all the potential problems to continue at the same pace of competing with other international organizations.
Appendices
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
References
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