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 The ascendance of Dubai Media Inc continues, it seems, with a very clear statement of its desire to be Topp Media Company.
Indeed, in the now-DMI-owned Emirates Business 24/7, the paper’s copy/paste job writeup of a WAM release is headlined: “DMI aims to be top media group: Al Shaikh”.
The slightly-impenetrable piece confirms a drive to shove DMI to the peak of Dubai’s media pile, presumably at the expense of the now-rather-ailing Arab Media Group, from which DMI has already snatched
three newspapers, a printing press and one TV and one radio station.
The occasion for DMI’s hard-hitting assertion of its intention to rule the roost was a major staff meeting last week, where Ahmad Al Shaikh, managing director of the group (as well as media escort to Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, VP and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai) briefed staff on What Happens Next.
“[Al Shaikh] said the importance of the meeting lay in the fact that it was held in response to an instruction from Sheikh Mohammed, who stressed the need to have confidence in the ability of media organisations to take the industry to the highest professional levels,” said the WAM report in EB 24/7.
“He said the aim to bring together all the institutions under DMI was in line with the vision of Sheikh Mohammed to make the group the leading media establishment in the Arab World,” the piece added.
Statements like this are only going to fuel the already-rife speculation that Arab Media Group is very firmly on the way out.
Shortly after Sheikh Mohammed moved AMG’s remaining papers and other pieces to DMI, the word on the street was that AMG’s chief executive, Abdullatif Al Sayegh, had quit. Then the rumour was that Al Sayegh had quit weeks or months before, having declared himself to be fed up and not having fun.
So far these rumours have remained just that – unsubstantiated scuttlebutt, fuelled by a distinct absence of hard information about AMG’s future direction (if any).
But knowing the ever-so-slightly unpredictable and politicised nature of Dubai’s media scene, we won’t be writing off AMG just yet – not until there’s something more official than what a friend of a friend of the marketing manager’s second cousin’s child-minder heard near the water cooler.
The odds don’t look good, though.
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