Hot Off The Press

Tony Orsten, CEO of media production company twofour54, tells Commerce about ambitious plans to transform Arabia into one of the world’s top creative hotspots.

Launched in late 2008, twofour54 is the region’s first initiative aimed at raising the volume and quality of home-grown Arabic content. Tony Orsten is the man behind the huge project to put Abu Dhabi and the wider Gulf on the media production map, bringing solid credentials from his background at MTV and Paramount Pictures.

What factors have been hindering original Arabic content creation to date?
The Arab region represents an audience of approximately 340 million people, yet it has historically produced a limited amount of content. A large proportion of this population (60 per cent) is under the age of 25, which means that there is a massive potential to target a generation of young people who are hungry for content produced directly for them. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing twofour54 and the region’s media industry is the development of an Arab talent pool.

As the industry continues to develop, it is essential that we develop and build the regional talent infrastructure to ensure the long-term success and sustainability of what we are trying to achieve. Today, we are creating an ecosystem that provides all of the elements critical to the creation of a truly vibrant Arabic media industry; from training, funding and business support, to the physical infrastructure for content delivery.

It’s common knowledge that Arab film funds to date have invested in Hollywood films, rather than the Arab film industry. How does twofour54 hope to change this?
twofour54 is a facilitator of content creation. We are putting the physical and intellectual infrastructure in place so that the region’s media industry can create content across all platforms – whether broadcast, music, film, gaming or publishing. There are a number of organisations in Abu Dhabi focused on developing the Arabic media industry, ourselves included, but to achieve this you need to establish the fundamentals – the talent, the funding and the facilities to shoot. This is the role twofour54 can play.

What is the single biggest difference twofour54 hopes to make to the Arab world?
We want to create a sustainable, Arabic content creation industry through an advanced ecosystem that offers production facilities, infrastructure, training and a new business incubator – all working together to create Arab content by Arabs, for Arab audiences.

How many companies does twofour54 already have on board?
At launch, we announced 13 creative partnerships; however, we have made considerable progress since
then and this number has grown to more than 60. This is only the beginning – we are building something unique here at twofour54 and our first full year of operations was very important as we establish solid foundations for the industry we are creating.

What is your target number of companies?
At twofour54, facilitating the partner community is one of our main priorities. What we aim to do over the coming years is to keep increasing the number of individuals, partners and companies based at twofour54 creating and producing Arabic  content. We are concentrated on content facilitation; we want organisations to establish a direct presence here at twofour54 to develop Arabic content.

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