Green light for CNN Middle East hub

This is a major step towards setting up a Middle East commercial and editorial hub in Abu Dhabi later this year.

CNN has taken a major step towards setting up its Middle East commercial and editorial hub in Abu Dhabi later this year with the appointment of Reme al Saiegh as sales director for the Middle East and North Africa. The Abu Dhabi office, to be the site of a daily live television broadcast and a regional centre for advertising sales, will be set up in the twofour54 media zone and marks the 24-hour news channel's fourth global hub after Atlanta, London and Hong Kong. "The Abu Dhabi office will be the first Middle East sales and live broadcast facility," said Ms al Saiegh. "We are excited about dipping into the energy of the region." Ms al Saiegh is in charge of hiring and managing CNN's sales team to be based in Abu Dhabi. They will make up five of the 30 staff here. Ms al Saiegh will be based at CNN's international headquarters in London, and will oversee CNN's sales teams across the Middle East, Africa and the UK. The new recruits will be the first dedicated commercial employees on the ground in the Middle East for CNN, recently rated the most-watched international commercial news channel among top-income earners, according to a survey by Synovate's EMS Middle East. For the past decade, CNN's Middle-Eastern clients have been handled exclusively by Media International Services, the channel's long-term representative in the region. "They've always been our eyes and ears on the ground," Ms al Saiegh said. With the new set-up, CNN's own sales force would help further strengthen relationships with clients. Gulf advertisers had been appearing frequently on CNN's airwaves recently, she said, in particular big government-backed companies such as Masdar, Emirates Airline, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways. For Emirates, the channel ran both a traditional corporate advertisement, produced by an agency, and used its in-house advertising production arm, Turner Commercial Production, to create two commercials aimed at business and leisure travellers. Ms al Saiegh hopes to offer more customised ads to clients once CNN has its own sales staff here. She said the company was already turning away from "straightforward spot buys", or simple purchases of airtime for advertisements, towards more tailored products. Already she has arranged a number of deals and programming sponsorships for the channel, such as Dubai International Financial Centre's association with the CNN programme Marketplace Middle East, Qatar Airways' weather sponsorship and commercial deals with Egypt Tourism, Emirates Airline and the Qatar Financial Centre. CNN also maintains local partnerships in key industry events such as the Dubai Desert Classic, Capitala World Tennis Championship in Abu Dhabi, Cityscape (Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia), Canvas Abu Dhabi, the Human Trafficking Conference in Bahrain and the World Economic Forum in Jordan and Cairo. The Abu Dhabi office represents CNN's second foothold in the UAE after its Dubai Media City facility, where it has a staff of 10 who run the CNNArabic.com website and help in newsgathering. [e-mail]