Leading Arab commercial media enterprise Arab Telemedia launched 44 of its award-winning blockbuster series and movies in the iTunes Store. This makes the production company the first ever to make Arab content available on iTunes. Arab Telemedia makes use of the NEP's UpperEast software solution, which simplifies the mastering, managing and distributing of video content.

Arab Telemedia creates, produces and distributes relevant and quality TV content across all platforms. Over the past 30 years, Arab Telemedia produced over 5.000 hours of drama programming, mostly aired on major TV broadcasters across its region achieving top viewership ratings. A comprehensive restructuring resulted in great growth successes in the years after, crowned with an Emmy award in 2008 for its socio-political series “Al Ijteyah” as best international telenovela.

Research showed that a significant number of viewers is active on iTunes Store. To reach a bigger Arabic and non-Arabic audience and penetrate a niche market, Arab Telemedia uploads 44 of its distinguished titles on the iTunes Store platform. The first batch of seven titles is selected on subjects like historical importance according to the need of the target group. It will go live with the start of the Ramadan, June 6, 2016. One of the first blockbuster series to be uploaded is ‘The Invasion’, the first Arabic show ever, which won an Emmy Award. Arab Telemedia plans on starting with iTunes Store and explore other major players in this (VOD) domain.

The evolution within the media industry and the need to approach customers directly, made Arab Telemedia look for a solution and partner to respond effectively to these market changes. In NEP it found a world-leading encoding house, certified for content delivery to all major VOD platforms and a provider of both the technology and the know-how to distribute productions of content owners globally and digitally.

Fadi Al Shwaihat, COO Arab Telemedia said, “We researched many solutions and providers to make our content as highly available as possible, and found NEP to be the most convenient: with its excellent track record and being a certified partner of iTunes for TV content, NEP offers a one-stop-shop solution for handling all of our content. Other providers did not meet up to our standards. The highly professional teams of young and fresh individuals make the experience a good, learning and fun ride. They took us through the process step by step and were there for us 24/7.”

“Arab Telemedia aims big! This is a production company with high-value video content. It’s a perfect first step to extend its presence on a platform like iTunes Store. Our UpperEast solution handles all steps of the mastering, managing and distributing: from ingest and content preparation to delivery”, says Karel van der Flier, CCO NEP The Netherlands. “Besides this, Arab Telemedia only has to upload its content once, because UpperEast makes it available for future use for other (VOD) platforms. We’re looking forward to a long and fruitful partnership.”