A few weeks ago, I received a totally unintended innocent compliment, an observation that puts all frustration and often pent up anger to bed for a moment. A very discerning colleague who had no ulterior motive or even anything to do with production, audio, direction; not physically responsible within the creative arts per say, completely out of the blue suddenly said; ‘You can tell that you did the Designer Shaik telephone system Geg’. ‘You can? I asked in complete surprise. ‘I’d forgotten about that system, but anyway, how’?

It was not quite the answer I expected;  ’Well, I just phoned the number and it is so immediate and upfront, so loud and clear and just your no compromise style and voice direction’ came the reply. I have to admit that even the voices used, don’t even recognize themselves doing the reads.  My friend went on to say;  ’It seems the system is not completely active yet, but sure, that is so obviously your work’.  Now I felt good.

True, I had forgotten all about it and the system remains in the initial stages at the moment and if I know Mohammed Al Asfoor, owner and Chief Executive, it will stay that way until I get off my arse and get him fully connected world wide via VoIP.  But yes, I did initiate the Designer Shaik system with the voices we had available, both directed to the style I suppose they call ‘Geg’.

Designer Shaik is not a showcase by any means, but just a simple start and the fact that it has my recognizable indelible stamp on it, makes me very satisfied and even proud.

We do Zain Bahrain, Zain Sudan and have won awards in Kuwait with Gulf Bank and several other major banks in various countries.   **Update: No more Gulf Bank.  Staff changed and new people came.  Suddenly we got what we call in the trade ‘Cedared’.  The new people were our friendly Masonic Lebanese and before you could say  ’I suppose you have  countrymen down the road who claim they can do this better and cheaper’,  (Is that a hand behind your back?) the predictable ”’number”’ was ruthlessly implemented. Ah well! To be honest, it is their loss and a shame because they are good people. **

Voice ability and sweetness apart, I sort of like little Designer Shaik, I think ALL systems in the world should start out  like it, but unfortunately 99.99999% are horrendous and the companies concerned see absolutely nothing wrong.

There are so many deluded instant experts around, oblivious to any standards, but this is life.  I’m nearly at the end of mine, so I really don’t care who I upset, but do think it a shame that it can only get worse because people do take such offence when intimidated.

It is a comment we often get though, with many expressing surprise at the loudness and clarity of our systems when to be honest, at 8 bit, 8 kilohertz, telephone voices should sound like squashed cockroach.   I’ve been experimenting for 25 years to get those secret clarity algorithms and we keep experimenting.  Only the day before I wrote this blog, we were involved in a major network upgrade and the guys working in a major global vendor innocently asked;  ’How come your systems are so clear under such a hostile compressed environment.  Can you send us your algorithm?’ ‘  Well, take a hike baby if you think that we are ever going to give that away cheap.  And that is the crux.  Sure we could reduce the price just to complete with the peanut monkeys down the road.  Let me think about that for a moment………….  Ok, thought about it……….  NO WAY!

THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE VERY UGLY

To the point; a time will come when people from distant corners of the world will call the Designer Shaik call centre or main office and will hear exactly the same clarity, loudness and style (albeit VoIP strangled). Try City Bank or HSBC.  It is cobweb sludge, condescending and disgusting, but they don’t care. Most airlines are the same, Emirates and Gulf Air to name a few. Worse still, the ones setting an example such as the telecom companies themselves are worse than all of them except Zain Bahrain and Sudan.  Locally, a lot of the MENA region systems are done in Dubai.   The ego of anything ‘Made in Dubai’ with the arrogance that it is world class is just laughable. Etisalat is appalling, with no consistency or standards anywhere.   Forget the Middle East though, just take a tour of the UK.  My God, even the world wide Ericsson company goes down as probably the worst on the planet.  Outside of the UK or the States, there is some leeway with the false confidence of English as a second language.  Most just don’t hear themselves and thus see/hear nothing wrong, but within the UK or the States, there is no excuse whatsoever.

Nobody can do Arabic like ADmaze Media does Arabic, so don’t even go there.

I don’t bother calling Call Centres these days, because I cannot make out what is being said most of the time, with so many different voices, badly directed and just ‘piss poor’ audio quality, slammed together with no consistency or standards.   Hell, if you come to little old Bahrain, 99% of IVRs or Corporate answer machines have the very same voices on them.  Even major competitors, so callers get totally confused.  I am at a loss as to how company bosses allow their image to be crapped on so easily.   Apart from Zain, call any telecom company for example, it is like a copy paste.  One bank to another.  Crazy!

On top of all that, no account was ever made for VoIP in the production stages. Worst of all, Advertising Agencies YES!!!!!!!!!!! ADVERTISING AGENCIES are being commissioned to establish or sort these systems out as if they were doing the annual audit layout.  Pathetic! My plea to you guys and I do love you really, but stay away from IVRs because you  really do bring this world to its knees with the monkey see – monkey do condescending pap you insist on.  ’DEAREST CUSTOMER’.  Puke already!  These deluded incompetents hear this ‘shit’ everywhere thus go right ahead and copy it willy nilly. It is as if it is a law or something.  Dear me, ‘City Bank’ even proceeds to tell us exactly where the Hash key is on your ‘mobile’ phone.

Challenge the owners of these very bad IVRs and VoIP systems as I frequently do and they are instantly intimidated as well and many a so called ‘responsible person’ becomes so full of brinkmanship they make statements like;  ’Hell would freeze over before I would work with that bastard’.  Meaning me of course. Wrong!  Always, go for the best, you will get the kudos as a brilliant indelible manager when the fat lady sings.

Just blame telecoms. There is something to be said for that too, although really, other than setting bad examples initially, it has NOTHING to do with telecoms now, it is the amateur. incompetent, careless dingbats they employ, who possess not a gram of art and look for the very cheapest way to do it and consequently milk it.  In fact, those same dingbats, don’t know the difference anyway, so to quote them our price would scare them witless.  But are they really to blame?  Right at the TOP is to blame for allowing their image to be tarnished so instantly and easily.

So many times I have said it – ‘I am a telecom man’! Not through choice, but by necessity and I support all telecom companies just as any loyal employee would their own industry. Especially if the telecom company keeps paying me money. I actually get on very well with telecom people, but sometimes I want to shake some art and creativity into them.

Telecom companies have had their day though. Times are changing and the days of money by default cascading in – in the billions every second has gone. The monopolies have gone, soon the networks will be the only thing left, like rail tracks, used by thousands of small enterprises and all essential infrastructure will probably have to go back to governments as it was at the start. The likes of huge organisations such as British Telecom, AT & T and so many more all over the world, who actually ran countries at one time, will be diversified and people like me who stick by them and endlessly nag and try to give them diversifying ideas to adopt will be approached in panic and desperation, once the penny drops. Now they just dismiss us until their competitor ‘does it first’, but sooner rather than later, they will tend to their bruises and wish to hell they had been more adventurous, creative and dynamic.

I AM I SAID

Today I came across a strange site called ‘Who Am I really?‘ Who ‘he’ is really I don’t know, but he gets off on some close to home thoughts and I wanted to reply to his last post, but the registration email never came. So as Double Dutch as this post might seem, there is some definite ’6 degrees’ about it. Among other things, the ‘Who Am I’ chap questions whether our VoIP chatter ever goes into space. Yes, Voice Over Internet Protocol, a string of techy words which even granny will be uttering in her failing years.

Geek moment: VoIP is nothing but a giant digital router carrying it’s eventual analogue load which we as mortals can hear. As a protocol, VoIP is not really frequency dependent as such other than the higher the number, the more digits, the more addresses in cyber space.

‘VoIP’ a misnomer really. The word is freely on the tips of everyone’s tongue these days as if VoIP is actually a video or audio signal. As you know, I am in the ‘Voice Over’ business which is NOT to be confused with ‘Voice Over Internet Protocol’. The other day I read a couple of (so called top professionals) voice over artists Face Book page comments which were just so way off. I have never heard such a crock of BS in my life. Trying to be right up there and up each other blowing smoke up each other and ‘in the know’. One says to the other; ‘Are you on VoIP?’ In itself a completely ridiculous thing to say. ‘I got so many gigs here in Hollywood, I am in big demand, I am sending out VoIP segways all day these days”. …………….WTF? But if it makes you sound good and hip and the other ego ear laps it up then go for it.

To really understand some of this post, you’d probably make more sense of it if you read the ‘Who am I really’ blog first. For those who cannot be bothered, he is talking about the ever life-overtaking VoIP. VoIP is how your telephone gets networked these days; it is how Skype manages to connect you and send your gob or pic down the net. Without the IP, the web wouldn’t work nor would your little home computer network, come to that. It is how you can switch on your house lights, cooker or view your web cam in LA while you relax at your mistress’s house in New York and your spouse never knew you were away in the first place. But you all knew that anyway.

Skype is not the only thing that goes via the Internet. EVERYTHING is now via the INTERNET and your telephone via an INTRANET as such.

Don’t laugh, but Birth Certificates will be a thing of the past. All humans will be allocated an IP address. In time everything will be IP, even sex – somehow!

GEORGE ORWELL (Not really)

Many of you reading this might have a Cisco or Avaya telephone system or something similar in your office. (Good luck if it is Huawei). Certainly, the telecom companies use one or the other to implement their Call Centres. The whole company is connected by VoIP. From inter office to the complete telephone network, the transition to VoIP is pretty much complete.

As for our friend on ‘Who am I’; wondering if VoIP is or is not reaching to the universe, or as he puts it; ‘Being rarely transmitted over radio waves’. But that is not quite kosher. Of course, 3.5G and the pretence at the so called 4G GSM is already with us big time and is carried across telecom cells by the zillion gazillion as I type. All that radiation at those frequencies go straight-line to God’s living room as well as to your little mobile phone.

Skype is a different fish because it is not airborne.

Yes, as merely a carrier, VoIP routed audio might well be proprietary re-encoded on say a Huawei or Nokia/Siemans, Verizon, Ericsson blah blah protocol, but decoded it is still generally the ‘encoded’ Mu-law or A-law compressed audio form factor having been VoIP’d.

(Non geeks, don’t dwell if you are confused now, just move on, or you really will not live very long).

So just what would sophisticated Aliens make of the awful audio quality? God is probably being sick and decides to stick to listening to CDs in his living room. (If so, another question; how did those CDs get there? No doubt bloody boring U2 got in first)

UNSQUEEZE ME O ONE CHILD PER FAMILY

The problem is; the likes of the somewhat dubiously very Chinese quality Huawei who ARE with their VoIP taking over the world and squeezing the tripe out of the bandwidth just because they ‘technically’ can and as if another 100 billion people are about to join the population within weeks – all with mobile phones. This must be a cultural thing rather than technical and a natural fear of mass over population. The others follow suit because telecom companies do nothing but copy each other and are NEVER original.

Hence, I don’t know about you, but as an audio engineer- telecom whore and maker of VoIP material every day, I complain, shout and blog that there is ‘ABSOLUTELY NO NEED’ to squeeze bandwidth further to traverse telephone lines, even below 3K which they still TDM (Time Division multiplex). Non geeks keep on moving, or your flesh will start to slide off you and you really are gonna die sooner.

Telecom companies make the money honey and give us facilities, but no quality. Now we are all subject to the dumbed down syndrome; ‘Oh nobody will notice – MP3 at any coding is great quality audio’. Like anything else thrown at us these days, we all numbingly except it. No matter it might be transmitted over Extremely High Frequencies (EHF) or fibre in the ground which has bandwidth beyond imagination.

Does anyone agree that with each advertised network ‘upgrade’, the call quality often seems to degrade. Actually, it is frightening and getting worse by the call? Connection times are much much slower as well. It is important to note that these telecom companies boast 3G or now they will be calling it 4G, but same towers, same coverage and half the time you are back down to GPRS or EDGE because 3G over air has NEVER been solid. I don’t know why, but it aint! We really do have to wait now until 5G surfaces and if Nostradamus was on the ball, none of us reading this will EVER live long enough to see it.

It is a conundrum. Likewise, I am not sure Digital Terrestrial TV will survive or if not still born because there is little sense in it. Satellite is so prevalent with a bigger footprint commercially for less bucks. Even then, channels are still VoIP routed across networks.

Shamefully, ‘radio’ is considered the forgotten prodigal and now especially with the Internet fast enough in most places to stream it – albeit crappy quality.

Not to be confused with VoIP or anything like, DAB or Digital FM radio is a funny old boy. It should be every where now, but it isn’t and Satellite radio should also be everywhere, but it isn’t and to make matters worse, I cannot see it ever really happening other than the smatterings of it already around Europe.

I’ll say it now LOUD AND CLEAR but will be shot at dawn from my own peers for divulging it; what is the point of digital FM when we have WIMAX? Tell that to the average telecom executive and it will go straight over their heads. They know what you are saying, but just can’t put the two together.

Satellite radio struggles and only really works in the States, but there were better
ways. Probably greed, ignorance and bad fish guided the authorities to only allocate
public access at EHF blocks through mobile phone operators instead of a ‘forced’ new spectrum and format for ‘Audio’ which really takes up such little space. ‘Sure you can have it’, says the authority, leave it to the mobile operators as VAS (Value Added Service) – OH NO PLEASE! This is the death knell of creativity.

However, it does/would makes sense, we can use their towers, so the flower power people among us wont complain about more radiation or being zapped from space. However, as I have blogged before; life as we know it Jim is in the hands of the telecom companies, but they don’t recognize it themselves, or let’s just say they are oblivious to it as “minutes and seconds” is all that concerns them.

ARE YOU SIRIUS?

Now, If a telecom company were told that they had a ‘monopoly’ and could make oooodles of billions by also transmitting 20K FM radio over their cells – would they? Yes, if they ‘were’ a monopoly, as this is the mentality; nothing to do with enhancing the arts or indeed having a passion for it. Then you tell them that they have to do it, independent of a cell phone by giving us all a free $20 box to receive this EHF in the car or kitchen – they would probably refuse as it would not compute.

Telecom companies make most of their money from misery (panic, war and sadness) and consider ‘entertainment’ to be VAS revenue such as muffled, distorted ‘ring tones’ which the masses blindly pay for. Again, each telecom company will do it because the other does.

WHAT’S APP DOC?

I doubt they will be open to admission, but most mobile operators make their bucks these days with SMS revenue. (I’ve said it before in earlier posts). Now we have ‘Whats App’. This is serious stuff and the telcos are sweating. It is better than SMS by far and of course so much cheaper as it only eats into your ‘data package’ which is getting cheaper all the time, or should. Watch out! There is a finite line, just like LCD monitors and Blue Ray DVD players became cheaper and cheaper, there is a point when it will ‘rigidly’ level off. You watch as all potential revenue is diverted through such data packages as technology progresses.

Already I mentioned in earlier blogs a few years back about little old Bahrain and no doubt a million other places. Wifi, Wimax, 4G becomes available everywhere on pocket devices and you can make equally good quality Skype calls these days, from literally anywhere in town for no cost other than your data package charge, compared to your GSM which is stunningly high in places, especially the obscene roaming charges. The latter is just very greedy opportunistic practice between operators.

It all goes back to the lowest common denominator, whether you look at mathematics or public awareness and perception. Few will pay for quality audio or entertainment, so perhaps the telco’s Ring Tone mentality is right and besides, what they get over the Internet is stutteringly acceptable to this low denominator.

Ironically most radio station web streams are maintained by robbing revenue from their associated commercial advertising on their FM terrestrial outlet – and which is NOTHING to do with VoIP. There is very little or no interest in wider bandwidth, higher quality and the telecom companies can’t see past their nose to explore possibilities and MY GOD.. believe me, they have the bandwidth with oodles to spare.

Wimax is different and offers incredible potential but bureaucrats in government only see black and white. If you decided to sell fried egg sandwiches, having cooked the eggs at the base of a Wimax antenna; the civil servant will fine you simply because on the piece of paper he or she has – which documents your license, it doesn’t say anything about using the incidental generated heat at the transmission point for anything other than passing a a radio frequency which contains VoIP traffic. Now like Star Trek, if we could atomize a human and transmit it over Wimax, our civil servant wouldn’t care less as long as it was somehow VoIP.

radio bahrain ads bad export edit

WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   You want more?   Well ok, under Bahrain’s own National Action Charter of 2001 and in particular; ‘Chapter 1 – Forth Element’ I can almost say what I like about you and worse still, you can say what you like about me.  I do have some serious b*tches to get off my chest and most of it, if not all, concerns media.  Oh….  You know that already and the intimidated hate builds up.  The poor horse, that was so cruel.

Local Government controlled media is progressing in leaps and bounds at the moment.   A few leaps, but mostly still bound. All due to the situation in Bahrain of course and at last, more of an interest has now been taken in it from the top, thus it has become a lot more open and somewhat more interesting. The rest of Gulf stays the same, yawn.

Professionalism wise, no improvement, but with time and training and a firm hand, Bahrain’s media could be great for a little Island, as it was back in the late 70s and early 80s.  Since then,  output in Bahrain has been dire and NOBODY cares, nobody controls it, nobody contributes.  Will we see more options any time soon? I am not counting my chickens, but then again, I am not interested in political based radio or TV anyway, there is gallons of that on satellite, full of talking heads all sprouting absolute dung. I want quality entertainment and information, professional advertising and if you did but know it, SO DO YOU!

The Dude from ‘let’s blame society’ blog describes his tirades as ‘rantathons’ and he/she is right.  My posts are just that, massive juicy rantathons and I love getting on my box.   As I always say, I pay for the space, I love you to read it, I love you even more if you agree with me and I love you still if you don’t.  Well a little bit anyway  – just for coming here in the first place.

EXACTLY WHERE IS THIS PLACE CALLED ‘TIME AND A PLACE’?

I’ll get the point in a minute, hang on.  The British Club of Bahrain just sent around a missive threatening to disbar any member who discusses politics in the ‘social’ club.  Bizarre and although worded as such to generalize, I thought it probably related to some punchy under-the-influence misdemeanor or something, but apparently not. Rather it seems someone or many obviously tried to take unethical advantage.  I reacted because the audacity and wording of the missive initially raised my hackles, as it did a few other folk who read it. Imagine, we are currently under ‘Safety Law’ in Bahrain and the world’s media is chomping at the bit to have a go at us and ‘nobody’ is talking about it at ‘social’ gatherings!  (Their highlight).

On similar lines, Bahrainis and Bahraini-ates in number read my missives when I get time to post and there are currently a lot of raised eyebrows pointing at me, wondering why I am not on Facebook for now (which I use as a blog)  and no new posts here recently.  Is Facebook the place? I guess why not!  Is my little website blog here the place?  I guess why not! Obviously the British Club who might feel more comfortable dictating what we can’t say, would prefer not to be.  Bravely, Mr. Andrew Savage the Chairman of the Club’s Executive Committee (give order) promptly replied putting my mind at rest and indeed admitting it was his wording.  A ‘good hand’ as they say in the Navy. I don’t know him, but I think I like him.

Besides, as I said, I am not particularly interested in endless debate about how to run a country or persuade someone to think beyond religion when it is an utterly fruitless task.   No… no… no, the real reason for my silence is TIME!! TIME!! TIME!! Oh!  Did I say TIME?  And besides, who needs yet ‘another’ opinion right now?

Had we had better ‘local media’ here in the first place, it could have been on a plate for the International Media.  Hell, a lot of what did go down, might not have happened in the first place if only……

No, I have not had time, but ‘times’ and feelings are extremely sensitive around the Island at present, with most of the world utterly confused as to what Bahrain is all about and just the motions of trying to explaining it to someone will upset one side or the other.   To me, ‘The sound of an opposing mind, is the first endurance test for democracy’ whatever that democracy relates to or covers, but I think we might be a long way off that psyche yet.   Its funny really, because in these so-called democracies, rarely does elected authority do the right thing anyway. It’s like a Praying Mantis or a Black Window; to consummate elected promises, the candidate will for sure be eaten by the public. Ironically, ‘Democracy is more about the safety and rights of the *MINORITY* than the status quo of the *MAJORITY*’ but that doesn’t seem to apply in theocratic states. If an autocratic government relents and allows ‘free’ or ‘freer’ media, the theocratic element will not.  Dilemma!

Time is something I am short of and I don’t get paid for times when I am making a nuisance of myself and upsetting the incompetent with my words, so I have to work for a living and fortunately, happily and shamefully for my home Bahrain, right now, as always we have a very full order book from afar.  I am not so much a God person, but now I thank God for small mercies as for sure the media industry in Bahrain is going to be severely bruised for a while if not wiped out for some, unless this perfect opportunity is grasped and we create new media platforms in good old fashioned competition and make it open and fair – and in particular radio.

The country cannot commercially sustain more than one or two independent entities despite numerous ‘connected’ upstarts who think they know it all and want to saturate the market to a standstill with their deluded ideas.  Just how many sharwarma stands can we sustain?  Good God, one only needs look at the number of Advertising Agencies in Bahrain and across the Middle East.  Well that is what they call themselves, but the pressure on each to make money for sustainability is cheap labour, no skills, knock it out at the lowest price. In the broadcast field, it is all aimed at near ‘monopoly’, all Government controlled platforms’, no choice, no level to aspire to. It is not much different with print or what can be placed on a billboard. So the lowest price is ***tendering*** and you cannot tender for art, it must be pitched and at a price. Nonetheless, there seems to be plenty of takers if you look at the standards up on billboards, in the press or OMG on the radio.

To be profitable locally in a level playing field is near impossible, so they have to look further.  Looking further means even greater pressure on professionalism,  greater pressure on accuracy and indeed freedoms and above all – trusted responsibility, which comes with the territory.  Then just let’s sit back and see how many ‘real’ takers we get.  It would be great for Bahrain if it led the way and at least left it open for those that want to try.  Oh stop!  Some serious training and talent is needed first though.

CRYSTAL BALLS

Coming right back at you, I live for media, I love radio and I absolutely crave professional advertising which is the only way I can make any living in media around these parts.  I used to make my living entirely by radio production and placement, but locally that dried up 6 years ago, as it did for anyone else not prepared to get in bed and scam.  We thought we had boycotted local radio of our own accord out of protest; so from what could have maybe been a million Dollars or so per year of independent revenue for them, we divert and spend elsewhere.  Oh Lord!  How deluded we are.  We were at first prevented from contributing and then our clients told that they had been told that  ‘we were not allowed to’.  Some very dubious ethics.  Not even production according to the Mafia as all our old clients were channeled off and dictated to – to use the cheapest player who is all part of the nest. Of course that was/is utter bunkum and cruel deceit but clients believed it. Who wants to pay for quality anyway?

How many times do I say it? How many times do many others say it? The quality of broadcast has declined to abysmal over the last 20 odd years culminating in the last six very long years of pure torture with excruciatingly bad advertising incessantly repeated minute by minute, banged at us by a monopoly running a monopoly whose only criteria is to cash in during their contracted time.  They knew they would be rumbled (found out) on the very first day by people like me, but that doesn’t matter, they have that piece of paper which reads ‘6 years’ uninterrupted.   Bizarrely advertisers, not to mention authorities are sucked into this and from what I can see nobody from top to tea maker complains. Ah but look at my earlier posts.  I have said it all before and I will continue to say it, even if they destroy another horse to make a point.

THE TOBOGGAN RUN

Not perceiving or being even remotely aware of the cause of the decline in broadcasting as a viable platform and consequent loss of revenue, new – out of their depth – replacement Civil Servants are sold this scam and see a dream coming true with an offer of money pouring in and having to do nothing for it.  They all  fall beautifully into the Venus Fly Trap absolutely oblivious to the damage they caused and the absolute denial of opportunity to any other long time, loyal patron.  ‘Oblivious’ is not a strong enough word really for they are ‘benighted’.

HEAR HERE NO EVIL – SPEAK-WEAK NO EVIL – SEE NOTHING

With the current situation and no doubt many demands still floating about, I have absolutely no idea what thoughts are mulling around the authorities regarding competitive free media platforms if any, but it seems the Lebanese ideas I posted of earlier might not now be too favourable after all. I am under no illusion though, because the group has deep routes and large threads and they are home to roost.

Right now, it is so difficult to get an ear, although I do have some very good suggestions and a lot of experience and none of those avenues lead to the selling off of assets to ONE ENTITY – a monopoly in exchange for a fee or percentage.  That is criminal!  Yet rumours abound that such plans are afoot to do just that again and I mean from credible sources within.  Sadly, these sources are oblivious to such a massive faux pas.  I have been told on more than one occasion now that this time, it is to be a tender,  which is the authority’s ludicrous idea of appeasement for those who complain or don’t get a look in.  Can you believe it, once again there is talk of not only all airtime on English Radio Bahrain, the most viable and potentially popular channel for advertising, but all Arabic channels including television.  Does anybody read history or look at notes?

I even doubt the tender will go out as only the absolutely ignorant of reality will respond with no thoughts for professionalism, quality or content, merely dazzling monopolistic opportunity to make a few bucks.  In the end, the authorities will probably default to what exists without any consideration for others.  I hope I am so wrong.

The whole idea is just a giant NO NO, the antichrist of all norms, but twice we have endured such folly with someone waving a wad under their noses, so there is an extremely high risk of signatures being exchanged and another potential 10 years of thorough hell.  Pray, pray pray  it is only rumour, but sadly I fear not and I stand corrected with a scalding if necessary.  Worse still, I am not allowed near the place to lobby.

GIMME A BREAK – A COMMERCIAL ONE

In between my devotion to the studio and 50 cups of coffee a day,  all regulars know that I also spend a lot of time challenging the likes of Main Stream Media, often having a go at Sky News, CNN or similar.  My pet hate is the ’non commercial’ BBC and for donkey’s years I have stalked this pile to the extent they delete my comments and just don’t answer my complaints. Same with the UK Guardian.  I use different names to get around it,  but I think they guess who it is.  In the next missive, (currently being sanitized to closely following this) I will indeed share a few Main Stream Media thoughts with you and in particular the BBC agenda which clearly a lot more of us have suddenly become aware of. But for now I am more concerned about the future of local media because I don’t intend going anywhere soon unless someone upstairs decides to throw me out.

You all know, a lot of people think I am barking mad and eccentric.   I hear it sometimes as if I am not standing in the room.  Yes, I bark on and on about local media and its standards or thorough lack of.  Time is now ‘critical’ and God help us if he is the only one listening because I fear an even bigger disaster is about to befall Radio Bahrain and the rest of the Government platforms, more so than we have torturously endured during the last 6 years. How would you feel it if was your life, passion and loyalty to a country and its radio industry was just wiped out in a blink by an  uncaring, unaware eye;  allowing a new monopoly being given carte blanche over a monopoly simply because of more incompetence?  An utterly unfair business practice which smacks of mafia like corruption which literally deleted local radio as an industry from anyone else’s reach. Total disregard for those who whole heartedly supported it or relied on it for work and income?  You’d get a blog like this and try and fight it!

Coming up:  THE SILENCE OF THE BAHRAIN LAMBS – International Media -  “Until recently, I thought I was on my own in a padded cell fighting this massive International Media Machine agenda”.

]]> http://geghopkins.com/2010/12/will-wishing-you-a-happy-new-year-change-anything/feed/ 0 http://geghopkins.com/2010/12/light-years-of-surprises-2/ http://geghopkins.com/2010/12/light-years-of-surprises-2/#comments Fri, 03 Dec 2010 10:51:22 +0000 Geg Hopkins http://geghopkins.com/2010/12/light-years-of-surprises-2/

QATAR AIRWAYS TO BUENOS AIRES

(September 2010)

When some Mid U.S. based Facebook friends put out a plea for ‘an unusual, something different – more exciting, honeymoon’ idea, they probably received about 400 suggestions, 401 including mine then. I suggested  ‘Kabul’, but few take me seriously anyway.  Surprisingly, nobody came up with any place in South America either, not even Brazil’s Rio and the Copacabana.  To be honest, I never even thought about it.  As for Kabul, well it might shock rather than surprise you to learn that Afghanistan apparently has an active tourist board and according to recent BBC World Service documentaries I have been hearing, a woman whose name I did not catch has been revisiting her ‘beautiful city’, waxing lyrical that Kabul rocks. No bias there then?
Afghanistan apart, one only needs to keep a bit of an adventurer’s open mind to assume there are still some very pleasant ‘surprises’ on the horizon where you don’t need a Humvy and a flack jacket. Looking from the Arabian Gulf this horizon can be a very long way away indeed especially if one thinks of South of the Equator and Argentina as a destination – where your bath water is supposed to run out clockwise. (Ask a pilot).

Argentina!  Someone shouts and your mind probably goes blank for a minute, until you picture the football colours and Maradona. Then you think about Eva Peron, the Catholic religion and continue to rack your brains until you come up with corned beef. All those things are true, but you are in for one of the above-mentioned huge surprises if you have never been to Buenos Aires and decide to risk it. Of course, from a British perspective, if you say you are going to Argentina, the first thing your friends will say is; ‘Don’t mention the Malvinas’.

Your next thought might be; ‘How the hell am I going to get there from here’?

Something that might squint one eye and raise an eyebrow in wonderment is the fact that in June this year (2010) Qatar Airways launched their non- stop flight to San Paulo in Brazil with an onward hop to Buenos Aires, the capitol of Argentina. Argentina! What prompted that you might ask – who on earth goes there?  Isn’t that near Antarctica, the other side of the earth?

All that apart, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that the number of Brazilians in the Gulf has recently increased dramatically and Sao Paulo is a highly industrialized city, so obviously some discerning potential – but Buenos Aires?  With something like 88 aircraft now, from no airline at all what seemed like just a few weeks ago, Qatar Airways are starting to head all over the globe and low and behold, here we are today,  they are flying the route via Sao Paulo in Brazil, not once a week, or three times a week, yep,  a ‘daily service’ using their newly purchased very long range versions of the Boeing 777 which you probably didn’t even know they possessed.  Furthermore, these huge beasts are full both ways, all the way, already. ‘That’s some bad hat Harry’ and I bet your are surprised again?  Someone in that airline is obviously on the ball, rivaling if not bettering another nearby airline which media hype will have you believe the world is in love with and devoted to. Let’s just say that the views contained in this article are not necessarily those of the publisher.

Buenos Aires is 2 light years away from Manama Bahrain (my dwelling) and Doha with an entire continent and an ocean in between, so how can this be achieved?  The quickest way there would be to go straight up, wait 12 hours for the Earth to come round and then land; or find a comfortable plane and follow the ‘great circle route’ at double the time.  Going there from the Gulf, Buenos Aires is always coming at you, so you’d think it would knock off a few hours travelling time but since you are going backwards with it, don’t bank on it. Enter Qatar Airways all new Boeing 777 – 300ER still in wrapping paper.  The name or type of aircraft probably means nothing to most, but it means a great deal if you are a long haul passenger and you have to fly economy.  The – 300 ER means ‘Extended Range’ and this baby will not fit in your duffle bag; you could drive a double-decker bus through the engine alone, but that would hurt. This is a very big boy indeed and anything but cramped. There is no First Class as such on this plane, only Business, but the Business Class is so spacious with full flat-bed sleepers and better than many First Class services experienced.  For once a superb state-of-the-art Oryx touch screen video-on-demand entertainment system that actually works and trust me; you are going to need that, along with the ‘free’ rather up-market set of jim-jams  (pajamas) the crew dish out so you don’t crease up your clothes when you invariably fall ‘flat’ unconscious for 8 hours or so. Flying in such a bed room for the rich and famous, perhaps hoping for some rich and famous perverted antics with gorgeous, dusky  South American dancers, stripping off to change in full view – just didn’t happen! Instead I was left with my slung together colleague, a young Jo Mortimer from ‘Destinations of the World’ who taught me a thing or two about Argentina. I hate toilet talk, but I have to say that the outhouse on these 777s are like walk-in closets by comparison, so this is where you change, among other things.   (Still, I have never slept with so many attractive women at one time, all donned in designer bed-wear).  Jo also donated his return trip jim-jams to me, hopefully praying that I didn’t have long to live anyway so a nice gesture and I’m still wearing them.

Yeah yeah yeah,  Business Class with all the service and trimmings is expected to be comfortable, but since this was a familiarization flight, it was prudent to go and sit in economy for a while, just to see how the other half survive for twenty three hours.  Wow! Economy doesn’t frighten you when you first see it, thinking how the hell can anyone my size crawl in there. Sitting down, I could move my legs quite easily and the seat itself friendly on your nether regions. Of course the Economy video screen is smaller than Business, but it is the same entertainment and programming faultless. Thoughtfully, Qatar Airways load plenty of food and you can have it whenever you like.

The journey time south to Buenos Aires from Bahrain is 25 hours to be exact. It is not much different coming back as the route takes you North East over the Atlantic, straight across central Africa to home. The Doha – Sao Paulo link is Fourteen and a half hours at 40,000 feet, so you need to be pretty comfortable to endure that. Put it this way, I wish Qatar Airways would put these 777s on all routes and I am pro Airbus normally.

This is the best long haul so far and one hopes that Qatar Airways keeps at least this configuration with these big jets, because most airlines use their existing medium haul planes that will indeed do the distance these days, but configured for short haul sardine runs. On a recent trip to Nice with another local airline, the same plane that did the Dubai run seemed to be on the Nice run as well and it was terrible, so cramped and utterly miserable. To top this off, apparently that particular airline has been offering ‘kids fly free ‘which resulted in a rather large maid or two, holding two young children each, sprawled across my tiny seat as well, making 4 people in a two seat row.  It was disgusting. Not with this Qatar Airways baby, the -300 ER has room for two crews, which is needed, so don’t be alarmed if you nod off with one set of faces firmly planted, only to wake up thinking you are at the wrong party.

Oh! Should Qatar Airways do the unthinkable and offer ‘kids fly free’ one hopes they would put on separate planes for children only and spare the horror of very long haul with screaming babies and fidgety kids. Stop it now!  We all know your kids are the best in the world – bite me!
Finally, before you set off, if you have not been to Doha for a while, standby for yet one more surprise as the place is growing like bamboo and if you are flying Qatar Airways Business or First, you’ll be met and escorted to the spanking new First and Business terminal. They are separate lounges side by side and like everything else in Doha these days; huge!  Bath, beds, (first come first served and no charge), massage, Jacuzzi and everything else in between.  Did I mention refreshments?  According to a chirpy well known, almost horizontally left leaning Business Editor who shall remain nameless but it is Arthur McDonald, who works for an even more well known local Bahrain paper and happened to be in the lounge with me; ‘Time of day means nothing when you are flying, mine’s a double’.  Until you try and get one before 11 a.m.!  ‘Sorry sir, we do not serve alcohol before 11 am; would you like Champaign instead?’  There must be some logic in that, but we didn’t find it; so on board we went. I hope the air-stairs arrive soon as busing to aircraft is tedious.

ARGENTINA

With gob gaping views of the Copa Cabana as we flew over Rio, a 1 hour stop in Sao Paulo to arrival in Buenos Aires 2 hours later, the flight was superb. Not the most modern airport in the world but completely functional as is absolutely everything else in Argentina. That was a surprise in itself. After 25 hours, you are a little dazed and you could well be confused thinking that you have just landed in Bombay, but rub your eyes; it is only the taxi markings, which are the same. Mentioning that, there are plenty of them and they are straightforward. Driving in Buenos Aires is fast much like Dubai without the ‘special needs’ thugs who blatantly break laws and endanger everyone by driving up highways on two wheels and ignoring traffic signals. The hot blooded Argentineans drive a little impatiently, but, unlike the cacophony of say Cairo, they appear to be passionately subdued if there is such a thing. Highway laws are obeyed, if not a little impatiently and if zooming along at 120 KPH on the freeways past signs that clearly read 60 KPH, past several police cars that ignore you; then yeah, all very legal. Yet Argentineans appear not to be reckless, so some comfort for the cautious, especially if you are heading out of town on a 3 year packed mini bus ride to reach the other side of this enormous country.

Buenos Aires is a massive city as is the country itself, with the widest city avenues and roads ever seen and most of them are one-way.  Everything from Conquistador Spanish to modern high-rise every block makes up the city skyline and indeed out into the endless country. Why so many apartment buildings as if you are in Singapore, when there is all that land for zillions of miles?  Apparently, the Argentineans think it cool and more modern to live in apartments, end of story. To add to that, there are as many dogs and cats as there are apartments and people in Buenos Aires.  They obviously worship them and packs of them can be seen daily being taken around by professional dog walkers.  Very LA.  Dogs sit in café chairs, on the streets, as do very furry cats, especially in the graveyards.  Each species has their individual territory, but both are incredibly nonchalant and friendly and you can stroke or pat them at will. They certainly do not seem to be afraid and nobody bothers them.

Buenos Aires is a very busy, very untidy city; with more graffiti per metre than a kindergarten art school.  It is everywhere, with graffiti on graffiti and nobody seems to care.  But you will notice that it is a strikingly clean country; even public toilets in tacky service stations way out on the pampas are clean; typically vandalized but nonetheless clean. The city never sleeps, from everything cultural to three religions; Catholicism, football and politics. If you want nightlife or culture including ballet and opera, everything is there round the clock.  In fact Buenos Aires appears to have a 25 hour day as many shops claim to be ‘open 25 hours a day’. This is one artistic city where the Tango was born and the Argentineans milk it to death loving every minute of it. Even gay marriage was passed into law recently and we all know someone in Rome who doesn’t like that.

If you read up on the history with its endless internal conflict, which was predominantly violent and oppressive, you might well visualize Buenos Aires and surround as being a typical South American hotchpotch of spaced out casas, haciendas and shacks with no serious roads to speak of. Surprise-surprise again, Buenos Aires could be in any major modern city in Europe. It is often described as autonomous to the rest of the country and if you go outside, that soon becomes evident.  Things do change considerably as you head out of the city and the country’s road network is like any ‘B’ road in the UK. Soon you are into God’s gifted lush countryside after countryside, which begs you to ask if some of the locals in this vast expanse of Argentina have ever heard of Buenos Aires.

You will notice that once approached, everyone is incredibly friendly and if you cannot speak Spanish don’t worry, do as most English do, shout a little louder and someone nearby who speaks it fluently will come to your rescue.  Actually, it was mentioned to Rueben the very experienced tour guide from ‘DestinoArgentina’ that everyone seems so friendly. With some consternation he answered; “Of course, this is normal, this is Buenos Aires (as opposed to Argentina), everyone is friendly providing you don’t talk about politics, religion or football’. They even like the British really and the British like Argentineans, but even with their penchant for statues everywhere, it is unlikely that one of Margret Thatcher will appear soon, despite many knowing the true ‘military regime’ politics behind the Falklands invasion.  Of course still in denial, it was the Falklands embarrassing defeat and Maggie’s rhetoric that in the following year, Buenos Aires ousted its oppressors and restored the current democracy. Alas, the Malvinas saga will never end until an alternative for oil is found.  Was that a bullet I just heard zing past my ear?

Politics apart, it is difficult to establish quite what is what.  From an outsiders view, it appears that there are two main political parties; the once banned Peronists and Peronists who swear blind they are not Peronists.  Argentinean flags are everywhere, even in toilets and the football colours reign high, although Maradona is not on every billboard and nobody knows where he lives, he is a God.  Then again, the vibe is that Argentineans celebrate ‘everything’ and demonstrate about ‘everything’.  You can be walking down the street and see a crowd and hear what appears to be gun fire, but don’t worry, it is only fire crackers marking the start of yet another demonstration. In reality, if more than a few hours pass without a demonstration somewhere, there will be a demonstration to demonstrate about not having a demonstration.

Worship in this country is a dedicated pastime with majestic cathedrals and churches everywhere. Unlike say Britain, you will actually find people inside paying homage to an equally endless number of statues who or which represent revolution to the founding fathers to Jesus Christ himself.  No Maradona yet and certainly no Eva Peron!  Don’t go there!  Since it was Andrew Lloyd Webber with his Evita musical and “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” which brought the name Eva Peron to the world and created the Argentinean legend itself, I fully expected to see a statue of him somewhere, but again, not yet.  Who knows for the future though?

Like Eva Peron, everyone is a budding actress or actor in Buenos Aires. Fitness must be a conscious thing as it is practiced with some gusto there and you have to look hard to find fat out of shape people. Models doing shoots in the parks, television shoots in the street, it was everywhere.  One thing is noticeably absent and that is the proliferation of peroxide blondes as currently trendy in the rest of the world.  Argentinean women tend to default to fairly tall, very dark haired and very dusky. Argentinean men go for it big time too and love to dress well. Girls, if you want to see ‘good looking’ and the perfect form ‘who’ is definitely not gay; get a room on the second floor of the Alveara Palace Hotel.  Each floor has its own gorgeous, impeccably decked out butler who will even polish your shoes, but a warning; you will end up pregnant just looking at him. That hot Latin blood is apparent wherever you go and almost all foreign girls living there met their Latin beau outside and followed him back.  With all this passion, there is relatively little conflict and we saw no street yobs or much police for that matter.  The only incident was up at a place called Tigre on the Delta where the full on passion was on display in glorious colour along the riverbank.  Our killer male was being attacked verbally and a little physically by his perfect model girl friend. It was no holes barred. It appears that he looked at another girl or something equally fragile that had set her off. No blood, but a fine display. The police were on hand to create even more drama. I think they kept going until someone showed up with a camera.

Everything is available in Argentina and nothing is cheap. If you like so many were also under the impression that this country would be cheap, you are in for another one of those many surprises.  Prices compare well with those in Bahrain, except beef, which is not quite as much, but a lot lot tastier as they make it there by the cow full and there is plenty of it to go round.  Oddly enough, the government has banned beef exports except for perhaps corned beef.  The socialist thinking being that this commodity is for the people or something like that, but don’t quote me on it.

If it is the cultural thing you are looking for then you are in good hands, because they must have more museums in Buenos Aires and surround than the History Channel can deal with.  In fact, I think there is a museum for museums. A stunning fully restored opera house with real gold covered pillars and sculptures; extremely decorative preserved vaudeville like theatres that are now large restaurants with tango shows. You name it, you will find it and they are all well patronized – full to be exact!  Having said that, Eva Peron is everywhere but seemingly nowhere and if you believe most parables, she is disliked beyond understanding. A visit to her sparse museum is worth the trip and a walk to the grave is a must. Unlike many coffins, which are very visible in the cemetery mausoleums, Eva had to be buried deep and if one wanted to exhume her once more, it would probably be easier to start digging from Bahrain. She is actually about 8 metres down and covered by 3 metres of solid concrete.  According to our knowledgeable guide: ‘This is not to keep her warm, but to stop the people digging her up wanting to kill her again’.  (Eva Peron died of cancer in 1952 aged 33).

Argentina as a country is so big and full of nothing but green grass and cows until you reach the Andes, which you have to cross to get to Chile. Indeed, not only did the country have a ‘Ministry of Agriculture’, but also right alongside it in a twin building was the ‘Ministry of cows’ and that is not a joke. Cows are not hard to spot as you go west but anything else is. Needless to say, tourism is on to it and in the bigger resorts hundreds and hundreds of miles from Buenos Aires you can enjoy a little luxury in the middle of nowhere.

Apparently a lot of nature loving tourists these days go out to the pampas and to ranches which they call ‘Estancia’.  You can find them on the web, pay your money and take your chance. All included in the price except the Malbec. These holiday retreats are off the highway and many kilometers up dirt tracks. Not at all for the all action, constantly logged on night lifer, because you are pretty cut off there often with no telephone, unless the mobile coughs up on Edge, but you’ll be lucky. No Internet and no TV. If you stay on the unspoiled, beautiful ‘Estancia La Oriental’ with its original structures and even Crippen like bathroom fittings; in just a few hours, owner and wonderful host Estelea Ocampo will happily enlighten you more about every very real aspect of Argentina. It is more than you will learn in an entire school semester in the city. Miguel, one of La Oriental’s ranch hands slaughters the animals for you and cooks them on their own unique style barbeques, which is more like a smoked thing. Miguel is a super person and so native but being the big softy, neither of those particular skills did I like much. Cruelty comes to mind and the so-called cooked meat far too rare and fatty, so bring your own OXO. Nonetheless, many love it and this is raw living with no locks on the old decrepit doors. It is so quiet and peaceful at these places and if the weather is good, which it is normally is in Argentina, you will have all the time in the world to be at one with yourself and a horse and go riding around the millions of hectares.  Watch out for the pterodactyl-sized mosquitoes, which WILL savage you relentlessly, so remember to take the creams.

Back to town or near and you could surprise yourself ever more by taking a boat trip up the river delta.  The River Plate (which means silver as the early settlers thought there was plenty to be had in it), which flows out to the cold Atlantic, is fed by what seems like hundreds of deltas. Silt islands are continuously being formed in these deltas and the Argentineans, like their conquistadores before them, make a habit of conquering them and building houses. With no indigenous natives to slaughter, it would seem like a doddle but it is not.  There are hundreds of thousands of Casas and some quite beautiful and the only access is by boat. Cheap as chips, yet it looks like a millionaire’s paradise. Look up ‘Tigre’ on the map, it is a town on the Paraná Delta and a lot is happening there. Yes there is a Museum or two as well.

With all this fresh water and the open Atlantic on your near million mile coastline, you’d think that fish would be as popular as beef.  Not so and the rivers don’t look too healthy giving one the impression that if the piranhas don’t get you, the pollution will. However, there are fish by the tin full everywhere and they come out to say hello.  The water colouration is down to excessive silt apparently and in no way deters the hyper river activity with yachts, boats and cruise taxis galore along with para-sailors everywhere. Even fishermen, but I think they would rather be catching the rays – the solar type.

All in all, Buenos Aires and indeed Brazil has now been brought much closer to home, with this Qatar Airways route, so bearing in mind that our summer is their winter, start planning, it will be more than worth the rather higher cost of the trip. If you have a year or two (which you will need) to cover the vast expanse and want to back pack across to the Andes or down to the glaciers, you are pretty safe doing so. You will still see a few typical gauchos and South American Indians on the way, despite modern day Argentineans believing they all died out due to disease such as smallpox and measles. The more deadly disease of ‘oops I just killed another native’ by both conquistadors and early settlers is bad etiquette and never brought up at the dinner table.  All that said, if I were a hundred years younger, Argentina would be my next outing.

Just in case you are still curious; both Jo and I tested it many times – depending how the water hits the plughole, indeed, the water will run out both anti-clockwise and clockwise.  According to my pilot brother (John Boardman), you’d need a hole bigger than my mouth to prove it – and that’s pretty big!

(For more reading from other perspectives – including in Arabic – re-visit this page and as I find them, I will link)

There is no such thing as ‘constructive criticism’ in media in this part of the world.  The closest you will get to it is perhaps religious concerns whereby a billboard shows a half naked lady (man ok) whereby some will obviously make the point that this ‘will’, (not ‘could’) offend people.  Rightly so and any Agency trying to sell their product with sex in this part of the world will surely run the gauntlet of the reverse of their intension happening. A total boycott maybe. But having said that, a little bit of sex goes well, if there is some very subtle ambiguity attached. I don’t really mean like the new Etihad TV campaign –  ’She likes it full on’  - whereby they give the run down of how their passengers ‘Like it’ in the ‘mile high club’. Sounds very Hogan to me. That is effective, but rather blatant and over the top of heads here anyway, as it doesn’t translate well into Arabic.

Here, artistic criticism comes in the form of  ’NO, DO IT LIKE THIS’, emanating from minds and mouths of  disastrously unqualified people in the business of art currently swamping the industry. English language is at fault because no matter how badly it is spoken, everyone thinks they speak is well. Then that gobble-de-gook gets translated in the Arabic. Furthermore, when these ideas and scripts are done by expatriates who have this worrying boss adornment, it often appears as they are more patriotic to the their host country than say 5,000 nationals put together might be; so we get this incredibly sycophantic mush which makes me vomit. How many times do you hear;  ’Dear Customer – Enjoy…etc.’  Then end the message with something about ‘Life being great’.   Ok ok.. I’ll stop now before you smash your screen.

THE THIN LINE BETWEEN LOVE AND HATE

Saying that, some of the bigger Agencies have been known to hire the odd genius, yeah!  Even in this area.  Problem is, they stay about 3 months and throw in the towel because they are so frustrated with the inane crap that circulates this media and constantly having their scripts and ideas rejected in favour of the endless dirge  spewed up by equally inane creatives or patronizing clients who think they know best. Why do they think they know best? That is easy, because it is all they see and hear in this ‘take the money and run – no qualification’ environment.

Of course, if you grow up with no standards to aspire to, then you think that must be the law of existence, the status quo, the way it is, thus so easy to call yourself an ‘instant expert’. This badness is perpetual, because most lovable folk out there subconsciously think “I can do that”.  Yet in that subconscious of ours, we all have a built in ability to actually perceive what is good or bad.  It goes bad because; what you see and hear is generally the pits and since media might not be your field, you don’t live it, breath it in the forefront of your mind, so you don’t care.

Deep down, we all want good, which is why good movies make zillions and bad ones flop.  So it goes without saying that so few of us are anything like experts, but we all have something which recognizes expertize, be it subliminal or otherwise.

FATAL ATTRACTION

As I said, occasionally touches of brilliance do a appear, but it seems so much less so these days. Same thoroughly inane scripts, same concepts, same same. I reiterate, because with so many huge ego, instant experts out there, creative art is given no values. Results;  ’intimidation’ far outflanks ‘aspiration’ and  is a much greater force perpetuating the dirge that we so often witness.  Make excuses, hide behind language barrier, culture or religion, this is all a mask to hide inadequacy and that very intimidation because when good stuff does appear, we ALL KNOW IT IS GOOD!

If you are in this business and have managed to established yourself as being somewhat autonomous; meaning you are perceived as an entity, such as a photographer, fashion designer, hair dresser, even director of films, or may I say the producer of some kick-ass radio or audio, then you are lucky. It means you have stuck it out and there is a smattering of intelligent life out there who perceive your worth

If you can, you’ll go for the BIG ONE, a bank or telecom company or something of which you delude yourself into thinking: “Hey, they came to me, they must be smart, this is going to be great – the portfolio I need. You think, what a brilliant bunch of guys they are . Oh no! This is fatal too.

As an individual, invariably, the reason this big client came to you is probably because someone who knows, discerns and trusts your work, went to work for this client in question and recommended you.  This is normal.  100% of my work is achieved this way.  If it is a new company,  you are handed over to this client’s new marketing team or ‘communication boffins’  (as they egotistically tag themselves), who all think they are the dog’s bits, ‘the team’ – ‘the headhunted’ –  ’the policy generators’ – the image makers.  It is egg before the chicken. Who hired this ‘dream ooze’?   Easy, someone in the almighty HR who has no inkling or idea about art and creative thought.

Now then, since you have been recommended and your contact is now accepted as part of the ‘dream team’, recommending you must have been kosher as this new ooze   ‘only go for the best’.  Sadly, this is their deluded ‘Andy Warhol‘ moment and they proceed to tell you – ‘the recommended one’ – exactly what to do and say or in my case, even how to actually record something.   It happens every time as if a law.  It is a vicious circle, so they might just as well have  gone  to some ‘say nothing’, quietly obliging,  jobbing slumdog at the cheapest, lowest, unrealistic price in the first place, because that is the output which invariably ends up in the media.  No shame, they love it, because they did it, so see nothing wrong with it. Welcome to the current abyss now. The blind leading the blind with no discerned fault.

Art is abstract, one man’s meat and all that, so it is out there to be loved or hated or at worse just ok’d. It is not there for someone to create ‘your’ art for you. How many times have you been on an all time high with what is probably a very novel, creative idea, artwork, script, or piece of music?  Say you take a brilliantly abstract picture and this is the one for the job and the first thing you want to do is get it out there. You present these elements of genius and there is no reaction, no reaction at all. You wait a day or so, you wait weeks, chomping at the bit knowing deep down that ‘silence is NOT golden’ around here. You wait, the deadline closes, then someone calling themselves “Marketing Specialist”  sends a communiqué through your contact along with their own absolutely childish, pro-noun drenched script or instructions on ‘what to change’ to the detriment of your art. You are so mad, you immediately surf for the nearest terrorism training camp  with a view totally obliterating this unwieldy lumpen molasses of nothingness. It happens all the time.

THE PASSION OF THE ANTI-CHRIST

The problems come when you also need to supplement your income in recessionary or ‘corrupt times’ , so  venture outside the intelligentsia in your circle of clients, with a need to start taking the odd walk-in.  Deluded yourself, you give this ‘walk-in’ the benefit of  doubt and think you are going to dazzle them with your brilliance once they clock your portfolio.  ’Walk-ins’ are the bane of the industry’s life.  The destroyers of the art.  The reason they are a walk-in is because they have the Kelvin scale of absolute zero perception of what is good or bad, they have no respect for the art and nor do they care. They want cheap and very very cheap at that. If they could do it themselves on their lap top, they would.  There is money in muck and prostitution, but there is so much muck out there, even muck has become competitive and eventually history will repeat itself and good creative people will be sent to the loony bin,

From my side, if I was a billionaire and owned radio stations for example, I would flatly refuse to accept this garbage, thus not only saving my image, but the advertiser’s as well.  Screw the money.  Sadly, the advertiser wouldn’t see it like that (as is the case with radio in the Middle East), they would just hate you.  But if the station stuck to their guns for professional, quality content, in time, the tide will turn and aspiration to higher levels should prevail.

DIRTY SEXY MONEY

Don’t despair, I reiterate, there is still money to be made if you cater for these bottom feeders producing this muck, just setup a web site; www.creativecretins.com.

In my industry we have lots of them and patronizing they are.  For example; www.voice123.com is a full take-away and often brings the whole industry to not a lot more than a laboratory full of caged monkeys. Oh I bet that hurt, but if Simon Cowell was auditioning half of you, the truth would bite and the reality hurt.

ENGAGEMENT

RULE NUMBER ONE: Never ask someone to critique  something you have done.  If it is good, you’ll probably hear nothing. If it is bad you’ll probably hear more.  Live and die on your conviction. Live and do not let live those deluded, tell them.  This sorts the men from the boys as all those deluded so called professionals will keep their mouths firmly shut as they cannot compete. Simply present what you obviously think is the finished piece as the finished object.

Whenever, if ever you do ask an opinion, it is the natural reaction for the target to assume you are asking for comment  ’how it should be’ rather than ‘whether they simply like it or not” and thus offer up an absolute load of irrelevant changes as if they are qualified to do so.  It wasn’t what you asked but that is how it goes.

RULE NUMBER TWO; If you have a hint or even slight suspicion that your client is of dubious ability to recognize or even remotely perceive that you know what you are doing, get the hell out of Dodge.  Don’t be afraid to say no! Most will come back and agree with you, those that don’t were obviously intimidated and will not keep quiet and just leave it, because you have caused an affront to their inability or inadequacy, so will slag you off anyway.

I quite often just say no, thus suffer the slag often!  For example; I’m asked for a 30 second script, something I have been doing for donkey’s years, tight, snappy and attention grabbing. The script gets presented with the warning; ‘This is 30 seconds tight and precise’. Low and behold,  someone in marketing or the client him/herself comes back with something complete superfluous – adding another 30 seconds to it, absolutely oblivious to the superfluous trash they have offered up.  You explain that 30 seconds is 30 seconds and they come back to you saying; ‘We read it in the officer, it was 30 seconds’ – or ‘take out a word – that should do it’.  You explain that the script is now 45 seconds and taking out one word will only save less than a second, they still insist.   I don’t paint, so no comment, but I imagine it must be devastating when some bozo tells you how it should have been created.

If it is music, then it is totally soul destroying and I just go ape. The complexities of putting a catchy piece of music down with all the technical aspects required to balance it – are in addition to the skills of an musician to play it and above all to be able to conceive it in the first place, as the artist thought it should be.  Not every musician is an artist by the way. Everyone thinks ‘they’ could have done it after it has been done.  I call it the ‘Barby Girl’ syndrome. A brilliant piece of classic, catchy pop, perfectly executed. Nope, it is not my favourite  song or even style of music, but it was brilliant.  So many will say; “Oh that’s crap, I could have done that’!  NO YOU COULDN’T OR YOU WOULD HAVE.

As I have written before; quaintly, the Arabs are better at admitting their inability to finalize something because they have the expression “Put two Arabs in a room and they agree to disagree’, which is subtlety quite different to pontificating one’s  ability if one doesn’t have any.

With number portability about to be unleashed upon the nation of Bahrain, I am busy doing a multi piece on Telecommunications Companies in all their glory – so  WAIT!!

Talking about putting the cat among the pigeons, being able to strap your favourite, long time held, number to any of the providers is going to really set off a typhoon of incentives one hopes.  Imagine, you have a great ’3333xxxx’ number, which you don’t want to lose but you don’t happen to like the provider; then simply port your existing number to a competitive carrier.  Of course, there has to be a catch coming for sure, nothing in telecoms is done without it being a potential honey trap; like  if you want a ’33′ number for example but you are not a Viva subscriber, then we might have to pay big bucks to get one from the original provider – or –  will all providers be able to issue any string.  Hmmmmm!  Deep and meaningless written like that, so read on.

As for the ’33′ thing; this post was all about ‘start-up privilege which as of June 2010, still exists, but if number portability hits in any time soon, I am not sure this post will have much credence.  I am actually trying to find out how much Saudi Telecom in Bahrain paid for the ’33′ string if over and above their license fee.  The gross national product of a country like Canada I hear, but I cannot get anyone to cough up the juice.

Ok, if you are visiting this page from the beyond, you have absolutely no idea what I am talking about, so Bahrain readers bear with this a second:

There are 3 mobile telecom carriers in Bahrain. Having obtained the 3rd mobile license in 2009  Saudi Telecom came to Bahrain as VIVA, starting operations in the first quarter of 2010. Shock, horror, scenes of a Honk Kong bank going under at the Viva stands, Viva was awarded the mobile string ’33″. HOLY SMOKE!   Read on readers, because if you are not in Bahrain, you’ll soon see how a ’33′ string is better than finding an oil well in your back garden.  For Saudi Telecom to use the name Viva in Bahrain makes a whole lot of sense and it is what they did with their operation in Kuwait because it would be pretty dumb to call yourself ‘Saudi Telecom’ in another country wouldn’t it?  Imagine the subliminal alienation that would cause.  The other two carriers are: Bahrain Telecomunications (Batelco) and Zain, formerly MTC out of Kuwait. Ok got it?

So anyway, I removed the original blog because I received comments that I was biased against Saudi Telecom which is an absolute load of tosh.  Not at all! On the contrary, I envisaged great changes and many good things to come from what I thought was a severe case of  ’donkeyism’ (see explantion in next post). Sure, I took out a subscription under the pretext that the Viva speed and lower cost would stun us all, only to return my subscription next day having discovered that there was no 3G coverage in either New Zinj or Amwaj. The other providers are pretty dead in these areas too, so don’t rush out the door yet. It was a mini war to rescind my Viva subscription and I am not sure even now where I stand, but I think I won and Viva eventually did the honourable thing and I am pleased with them. In fact,  Viva seem to have surprised more than a few and very obviously worried the crap out of Batelco when none of it was necessary.

It stands to reason though, having a mobile network access number which begins with ‘3′ by default  -  and the international dialing code of the country is……… um!  973 then by some miracle of ‘justified leg-up’ for the incoming competition the allocated network begins with ‘3′  then it is BONANZA time unlimited for that company.  Imagine +973 33333333?  Even the President of the US couldn’t possibly get better and that was the crux of the blog really.

Taking commercial initiative is entirely acceptable if the playing field is level and I suppose at its launch, Zain could have more than halved call rates, as they already had a substantial network within the region and more on the way, but that didn’t happen.  Besides, Batelco would have just followed instantly if they were allowed to.   Perhaps the burgeoning TRA (Bahrain Telecommunications Regulatory Authority) might have insisted that Zain initially keep similar rates. I doubt it, but who knows the politics?  If one follows the immense public rows the TRA are currently having with Batelco, it seems to the public that ONLY Batelco suffer the TRA wrath with the other two now swaddled in lovingness like protected babies and each time they cry, Batelco cop it.

As this post goes live, the TRA have once again rapped Batelco for simply improving their entry level Internet service, by doubling the speed for the same price.  Shockingly, Batelco had to instantly issue a statement and rescind (there’s that word again) the upgrade, much to the public’s disapproval.  Although, it happened so fast, that the average Jo Public wasn’t even aware that anything had happened in the first place and I have not read anything about it in the English Press, but I could have simply missed it. In fact, as of August 2010, Mina Telecom the Wimax 2 Internet provider has reduced the monthly charges by a little over 10% it seems and have upped the allowed bandwidth.  That and Wimax 2 capable phones about to hit Earth, potentially giving an Internet provider mobile telephone status, will the TRA stop them?  (In upcoming posts, I hope to look in to this in more detail)

When the second mobile provider Zain launched near 6 years ago, there was natural public interest that the national monopoly had been smashed, but  Zain had another advantage that being their allocated launch number string started with ’6′, so we had ’36xxxxx’. (37 is on the cards). Zain failed to utilize or make a big noise about their rather cool number advantage over the existing Batelco strings. Why Zain never cashed in was obviously a case of incompetent marketing, which persists to this day, plus Zain Management decided to be nice to the incumbent Batelco and not rub it in or up the wrong way  - out of some polite Arab type hospitality I guess.  No one feels sorry when a forced monopoly loses it’s privilege and to be honest, I see no reason to ‘rub it in’ as such with petty advertising either;  but what Zain and Batelco did, made me cringe. I was sitting in the meetings with the launch team telling them to ‘Get THREE SIXED‘ and smash it all over the Island.   I even did a pitch demo to entice them, but no way!  Astonishingly, this ideology and phrase was considered ‘suggestive’ by those who cannot be mentioned and instead, Zain put out desperately crap, pathetically inane launch advertising, which Batelco matched literally word for word.  So much so, that on radio it was the same voices doing virtually the same scripts for each company.  That might have been something to do with the fact that personnel from one Agency left to set up another Agency to handle Zain because incredibly naively, Vodafone UK insisted that their Advertising Agency be used here.  There wasn’t a branch in existence until this little gold mine surfaced. I cannot go on… my shoulders are squeezing up to my ears and my teeth twang just thinking about the experience.

When eventually Viva hit town, their advertising was eagerly awaited, but turned out to be pretty much similarly inane with the usual ‘is it a bird’, ‘is it a plane’ clichéd, all done before – hotchpotch, using carefully selected urban faces in modern dress – er.. um…  holding the Viva flag.  The dress code was good thinking.  Using very Arab type faces, also deliberately structured and I guess psychologically sound as we don’t want to upset those who are paranoid about this imaginary culture loss which is all seemingly too prevalent en masse here. Let’s not mention the equality of the  ’global village’ then.

Advertising Agencies can be as creative as hell in the Middle East but none of it will ever see the light of day, because everyone including the client is an ‘instant expert’ and that means cultural and religious values, so why hire ‘expensive’ real talent in the first place?  Knowing this and that any chance of getting something a little off the wall past the client is absolutely futile, the agencies just go along with whatever the client suggests, taking the money, hopping into their Hummers and Beemers and  sailing all the way to the bank.  As I mentioned before and many times at that; just like the Advertising Agencies,  most corporations do not hire creative/artistic people within their marketing departments either; in fact most give the industry no credence whatsoever and consider advertising a ‘no qualifications required’ job. (See the post about Gulf Air’s recent output).

At the moment, ONLY telecom companies are spending money on advertising as they fight each other.  Magazines and even the deadly crap radio are benefiting by default, but to be honest, none of it is remotely effective and the radio advertising is shockingly amateur and murderously crass anyway.

Oddly each telecom company is as pathetic as each other and something again all telecom companies do at launch is insist on hiding the fact that they are launching a service.  Weird huh!  Contacting the Advertising Agency or suppliers who got lucky with the pitch, you ask;  ‘So Viva are coming with “33″ numbers’? – A look of utter dismay crosses the faces of these desperately happy campers who are slaves to the money, working their arses off to get all the stuff done in this magical impractical 3 weeks they have been given to produce an ad campaign and get the Call Centre sorted out; the latter of which should never be their responsibility in the first place as it is completely and utterly out of their depth. The dismayed faces eventually straighten and the reply comes. ‘Who is Viva?  We really cannot say anything about ’33′ and don’t really know what you are talking about’.  Hmmm!  Yeah, we just got off the last banana boat.

However, based on the Viva’s gift from God allocated number string, Viva did come up with a stunningly simple but ultra effective side campaign which completely over shadowed their main themes.  OF COURSE THEY DID – OF COURSE THEY SHOULD – OF COURSE THEY WOULD. You’d have to be pretty damn stupid not to with a number string like that, yet I got blamed for giving them the idea having discussed my rejected Zain ’36′ campaign with Viva Advertising Agency  colleagues. Maybe it did have some influence but come on!!!  What would you do if your number string began with ’3′ in Bahrain? Nowhere else in the world accept Middle Eastern countries with their associated country codes and small populations can one ever get such a lucrative money maker.

My question was; how the hell did Viva get it?  You would have thought that Grandpa Bahrain Telecommunications and Zain, must have been weeing their pants when that baby surfaced, but to be brutally honest; within the two incumbents,  I mentioned it upstairs asking what they thought about the incredible advantage Viva would now have,  but it was like ‘zip’ … a small breeze straight over the top of their heads.  Nobody seemed concerned and I strongly believe that Batelco deserve much more as they are really a solid provider and with ‘technical’ quality at that; (Then came the Chinese Huawei. Oh dear!). Customer Service and Call Centre quality is another story, so let’s not go there! It has to be said that in general, Zain has an excellent Call Centre compared to the others and it is in-house, as is Batelco’s, but Viva outsources, so you might as well be talking to the moon. Customer Service on the other hand mustn’t be confused with Call Centre Agents or the respective IVRs (Interactive Voice Response Systems). We must commend Batelco’s Customer Service, but their Call Centre and IVR is way-way-way off target.  Of course, Batelco don’t only deal with mobile networks and if only you could get your precise message accurately conveyed from the Call Agents to physical ‘customer service’ down the line, then Batelco really is good.

The bottom line is; forget customer service, download speeds, SMS,  MMS,  3.5G, 4G and all the other Marketing crappy bits.  All telecom companies are the same, but in Bahrain and their neighbours, it all about whose got the biggest!  Not many  will rob your physical mobile phone, (someone nicked my Blackberry this week)  but they might kill you for what is considered a prestige number.  For many, the car hood is an extension of the middle wicket carrot along with the shaven heads,  which constitutes a new book for Freud. It’s all about the number and that is why we witnessed incredibly embarrassing scenes whereby for weeks,  Viva shops and stands had 2 kilometer queues waiting. Ridiculously sad  and pathetically ill-conceived and misjudged, Zain set up stands adjacent to as many Viva kiosks as they could get space for, all designed as a competitive alternative but not a soul was standing at the these Zain kiosks. Personally, I called my brothers in Zain and expressed my concerns for the subliminal damage this was doing, but like before, nobody is listening.  They are still totally deluded thinking that the world will eventually award them for creative ingeniousness with their ‘Butterflies better fly up your arse’ campaign which not a soul on this earth understands or deems relevant. Now they are giving candy floss away.  Something is definitely not right, but other than that, Zain is a good egg, good people, a solid company and remarkably honest in all but a few of their major pastures.

We in Bahrain have witnessed what must be million and millions of Dollars being spent on a completely ‘useless and incredibly childish ‘neh neh -neh – neh neh’ counter campaign with Batelco putting the country flag above the Viva flag and telling tales on them.  It was bizarre and still to this week, we see some of the billboards with it on.  This has to have been another Lebanese classic industry ploy and it worked so well as yet another money maker for them.  The media platforms and the agency made millions before someone in Parliament made equally inane statements about discrediting the Bahrain flag by advertising it. What a waste of money, money which could have been put to a million better uses and created such a positive psychology.

In truth, Viva approached us on two occasions to have their networks and Call Centres done, but didn’t like our price, nor the realistic lead time we insisted upon.  So they went away and had the ludicrously cheaper alternative do it.  Near launch, they realized it was a load of crap and came back to us.  Again, if the truth were known, they just didn’t like our price and thought we might compromise.  Instead it was conveyed to me that it was our ‘lead time’ that was a problem and not the price. Yeah yeah yeah!  They wanted something like 15 systems done in 5 days.  The way ADmaze Media does systems, it is so complete and absolutely spot on, one system takes at least a month to complete.  This is why we help some banks win awards (Gulf Bank Kuwait for example and there are more) Whatever, Viva have got what they paid for (twice). Same as Batelco, same as Mina Telecoms, BBK Bank and God knows who else.  Helli Welli as they say in these parts. (It means ‘so what – never mind’).

We/I bear no malice, I actually adore all telecom companies, because I am a telecom man.  Batelco are good all rounders and nobody can take that away from them.  Like so many telcom companies throughout the world, Batelco’s as with Zain’s  image, advertising and P.R. is really pretty 3rd world, kindergarten pap, but what do you expect from these monster corporations who just don’t listen.  Then again, the public don’t listen either and we are all anesthetized to it.

Other than being grains of sands by comparison, ADmaze Media is no different to the likes of Nokia-Siemens or Ericcson for example, whereby by default we work with all the Telecom Companies. Yes we do a lot of work with Zain but  it is not unusual for ADmaze to be present whenever there is a launch, for whoever.  For centuries before that, I worked with Bahrain Telecommunications (Batelco) until their chronic disregard for passion and loyalty pissed me off.  Nothing personal with them, it is just they are a corporation and people move around and the structure doesn’t handle creative arts or intangible product as an on going thing.

Yes, they are all the same and in upcoming articles we’ll look at what you really get and what is coming as far as L.T.E. (Long Term Evolution or as we say in the trade Lots of Telecom Equipment) and 5G (I’ll be dead by then).

It takes little imagination to understand the politics (or more like maneuvering) behind this, but the number of folk who asked me how I knew about this and completely dismissed it as my fantasy somewhat belittles my existence. Personally, I think it is the most positive move I have encountered in this area and hopefully will start some sort of avalanche throughout the region. I am not going to say how I knew, but enough to tell you that I know one very savvy guy involved.

Of course, it has yet to be seen just how professional the stations will be – or should we say -’perceived as professional’.  I am not sure on this front, because I do know that it could take us by surprise. Like Radio Bahrain’s new offering, nobody expects the likes of the BBC standards because it is just not in the make up of the area. No, not the BBC, not XFM, not KISS, not Virgin (bless them) not anything like you might hear elsewhere.  The answer will be; ‘In keeping with the culture and rigid religious framework – what YOU perceive as professional in the West is not what WE perceive here’. That is just clichéd rapport and a ‘believed’ excuse from incompetence that is allowed to be involved or run such projects.  Of course it is no excuse at all.  Believe it, Bahrain has restrictions, but a lot less than other states, so it will be very interesting to see or hear, what is about to happen in Saudi.  If it is anything like MBC/Panorama, then we are in for NOTHING, other than their astounding monopoly broken.

HEAR NO EVIL – HEAR NO EVIL – SPEAK NO EVIL – SPEAK NO EVIL

We will hear it in Bahrain (albeit Arabic) and I can tell you now, it is not a Koran channel.  The misconception which leads to incredible ‘self censoring’ which makes everything so bland, is the assumption that there are restrictions – yet there are NOT!!  In general, it is pretty easy in Bahrain and sometimes more easy than say UK or the States for example where everyone is lawyered up so you cannot say anything at all other than get away with obnoxious filth most of the time.  There are barriers but there is some imaginary, very wobbly thin line which is occasionally and unsuspectingly crossed, but one would be pretty stupid to come here and start your outrageous tactics to gain publicity.  By just being yourself and not attacking something for no reason, then nobody upstairs will bother you much, plus the hierarchy here is considerably intelligent and not at all small minded.  But the limits of ‘outrageous’ seems to be making chicken noises all morning on the breakfast show and wearing painfully coloured shirts which is probably thought of as funny  to much of the community here. This will gain you immense attraction, especially if you are a very nice guy.  I don’t say publicity because it is not, but it would get you a gig at every supermarket promotion, Rotary or sports event, weddings, clubs and no doubt even bar mitzvahs if we had such things.

TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN

Did you come here for the life style or the money?  Believe or not, groups or organizers used to make a point of booking me in the hope that I would insult the audience.  They still do! However, when I did take the piss out of something and the house fell down laughing, they couldn’t handle the complaints afterwards. Actually, I do not insult anyone, ever!  Unless you come at me that is.  Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, or so ‘they’ say and  I am definitely very high up the lowest life form.

But there are limits and no doubt I cross them more by nagging and coming in those people’s faces,  highlighting issues rather than what I actually say. This keeps me off the airways now, but really, as much as many think, it has NOTHING to do with the hierarchy here. It is far far far far below that. I’ve been suspended for swearing at the brainless security guards for pointing guns and lifting a colleague news reader of 13 years on the job, off the ground and carrying her out of the complex because another insidiously jealous colleague falsely reported her as an intruder. Later I was again suspended having been accused by the same corrosive individual, that I had raped her in the news room in front of 25 men. Well that is what my late boss Ahmed Suleiman  told me as he cried his eyes out in dejection as he explained there was nothing he could do as the outcome would be as it always will be; ‘remove the result of the problem, not the source’. He truly loved me and I had a lot of time for him as our private sessions would reveal. A clever man, highly intelligent, but a rather unavoidably weak Palestinian who talked more than me added to everyone else in the world. Some feat, but a good good man who wanted me on his radio and subliminally stood by me for my skills   Oh!  It is all true and a long long story. I wish he were here now to  listen to his take on things. I even hit him hard with my often adverse opinions about the issues going on around his birth place, but he just calmly explained his stance  and natural take on it without being vicious or threatening, which he could easily have been. For example, to knock Palestine around here would receive much sympathy in the privacy of friends and countrymen, but to openly say something is just not ‘kosher’. Even when I produced what turned out to be an incredibly successful 6 part series “BUSINESS IN KUWAIT AFTER THE STORM”  for DHL, which contained a lot of adverse comment mentioning the removal of Palestinians from Kuwait and other Gulf countries; the only bit he removed was the mention of how cruel the Iraqi soldiers were to the Elephant in Kuwait zoo.  I never quiet understood that.

If I spoke Arabic well, without an English accent, do you think they would take me on Saudi radio?  No but, we are constantly bombarded with English everywhere with heavy Arabic accents and that is deemed ok. Actually, I am known more for direction and content now and ruling with a firm hand behind the scenes.  I am not very tolerant of amateur presentation and programming, so really these stations needs someone of my calibre cracking the whip. What is it they say when something doesn’t bear fruits?  Um.. Er!   .. Ughhhh!    Would that be ‘FRUITLESS’?

I don’t know what makes me think of the legendary King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, when I think of the radio authority in Bahrain and the distribution – or not -  of frequencies on this friendly – ‘Ich bin eine Bahraini’ island.

‘Must be the non reality of the legend, the ‘Once upon a time’ , the fantasy of it all, I really don’t know. Whoever can pull “Excrementbur” from the stone, gets to rule for a while; then heroically defends and protects from infidels; then goes out and conquers all around as far afield as Never Neverland.  Not without the help of trusty Knight Sir Lebalot though and faithful Queen Notalot.  Many battles are glorious and victoriously won without contest, except the very last battle in which they are eventually slain and miraculously buried in a non existent grave in an Abbey which millions visit every year to pay homage.  And we all live happily ever after. NOT!  Because a new realm of so-called experts pop up and source their cadre from reputed hair dressing salons across the Island and never beyond – and it all starts again  – going absolutely nowhere. (To understand this rant if you are from far off places like – er.. Greenland, then you have to read all that goes before – and probably watch a few Youtube videos of Bahraini Parliamentarians complaining about the hiring of a Lebanese barber and friends to run the Radio and Television Corporation.)

FORBIDDEN FRUITS

Still no new ‘independent’ radio yet, but while we wait we can all enjoy the new pastime of………. guessing which half of the world’s web sites have been banned.  The ‘UK Lottery’ is one, but it comes and goes.  ‘The Bahrain Fair’  got whacked and by the time you complain or explain, the Fair has long gone. Maybe someone on the hill thought they might be selling those Chinese gossamer film hymen kits that squirt a little red dye as she screams ‘OH GOD”!!!    Of course, shhh!  We know why. There must be a tab that reads; “ABOUT BAHRAIN” and contained within is an innocent description of the lovely people of this sand pile and their leanings.  Great for Tourism isn’t it?  A corporation, a tour company or whatever, so proudly puts up a web site and a tab; ‘about Bahrain’ and you click on it and there is no content.  I have actually seen this on some Government sites and always wondered why it contains um!  er!  ’nothing’.  That in itself leaves stacks of material for the comedians.  Where was I?  Oh yeah! ‘Debbie Does Duraz’  type highly educational sites are classified just the same way. Even Google Translate at times, so you cannot look up words like ‘imbecile’.  There is just nothing one can do.

Granted, as an expat (still), it is not my business, but it affects my business. Besides, I don’t believe it, I KNOW IT… You make something mysterious and more want to know. Banning something is a very very good way to recruit followers.

It gets worse!  Orbit Satellite channel is now Showtime and the Showtime Network is now Orbit and now branded under the stunningly creative name ‘OSN’.  I bet nobody can guess what that means.  Good move MTC (Mobile Telephone Company)  to Zain.  How this OSN lot managed to persuade those on the hill to sweep and kill millions and millions of IP addresses to ban just one or two, even three naughty boys who give out Dreambox codes. I don’t care what the weirdest of nerd says in its defense; IT SLOWS DOWN OUR INTERNET to a stand still at times. Let alone block zillions of legitimate sites. All because of a bunch of privileged opportunists losing a few dollars of their billions.  If OSN gave back to the community, produced quality ‘original’ local material or even financed or nurtured the art in any miniscule way, I and millions of others might have a grain of sympathy.  I loathe the BBC, but there is no denying the corporation has contributed to creative arts more than any other. Even if it is the Bombay Broadcasting Company now.

Anyway: Sorry, I got on my soap there.  So what else has been happening up on Cedar Hill?   Well apart from the Lebanese continuing to “”sell dreams”" to the Gulf Arabs, someone convinced someone higher up to open up an new frequency.  They didn’t give it to me, despite my continuous lobbying for 400 years.

YOU SHOW ME YOURS’ AND I’LL SHOW YOU MINE

Funny enough, I heard a good line today from my good Bahraini in-the-know friend and confidant  while talking about the Lebanese onslaught.  He too, said that they (Lebanese) are somehow brilliant at selling dreams to the Arabs, but then you wake up; outside your house – naked.

I don’t know how much Sir Lebalot had to do with it, but one of the old frequencies which used to carry news feeds is being turned into a pop ‘Youth station’, for launch on February 15th, 2010.    Why again I have such thoughts I really cannot fathom, but the quaint old English phrase ‘Honour among thieves’ comes to mind, but obviously takes on a new twist here, since this is all designed to show some action and mainly counteract Group Plus who are the  current monopoly running the monopoly.  So do we have Sir Lebalot and brethren against brethren, because for sure they  have more than a couple of hands in it , but are fronting it as Bahraini.

That is the story today, but how someone can set up a real radio station with ”””new””’ DJ’s and get everything organized in 2 weeks is pretty spectacular, but that is what is happening and they are selling radio advertising space already.   By the way, if you are over nine and half years old, you will be banned from listening.

New DJs? From where?  They are apparently queuing up and each and every one carefully selected from the crème de la crème of Bahrain’s youth.   Except maybe veteran broadcaster, entrepreneur, impresario, pub and Samajam filler, colour blind and clown to all Mr. Krazy Kevin heading up the talent list.  Does that mean he will also broadcast on 96.5 Radio Bahrain as well?  Two doses of him each day? But hang on, isn’t he or wasn’t he on the Hindi Channel as well?

I wonder, is David Bloomer (he who was snatched in a dingy type yacht, boat sailing thing to entertain the troops in Iran recently) looking for a spinning spot back? With his new found notoriety and his challenging music choice this could be a scoop for the new channel.  They will have to contract him and pay him handsomely as all famous stars enjoy, such as Jonathan Roff’ (ex BBC now).  So Dave, settle for nothing less than a 3 year contract and a total package of Four Million Lebanese Pounds.

Well, if Kevin goes, Dave will have to fill in and who knows, maybe out Fisher or something.

To the current regime this represents CHANGE!!!!!!!!!  There has to be change.  It is like the old tasteless wartime concentration camp jokes.  “Today is underwear changing day!  (Loud cheer).  Block 13 will change underwear with block 14″

Ah, I love old Kevin, he never loses his temper and keeps going in among it all and makes five times what I ever did in week, so he knows exactly what he is doing.

Alas, this new station will emulate Radio Sawah it seems, except perhaps the heavier and no doubt more prolific M.Fkr content?

It is going nowhere folks!

When all is said and done, I do it alone………  or do I? Go here and read this:   I have to say that going through this blog is like turning myself inside out because so much of what is written is said by me – and those in my loop know it well. I’m not talking just about the Radio Bahrain rant, but other frame of mind tantrums. Those who think it is me disguised as a Bahraini – THINK AGAIN ! I don’t know who it is, I cannot read Arabic, but I’d sure like to meet the blogger, because he/she gets far far far more response that I ever did or probably could.  All I get is phone calls, the odd sympathetic nod here and there; ‘Geg you are so right, I/we agree and why don’t you write about……….”   NO!  Why don’t you comment or blog it.  The only thing withheld on here is your email address. Even then, most folk bang up a false one.  Do I care who you are? I don’t even care what you say, but obviously others do, so we have to watch our steps.  As i said many times, I don’t tell any untruths which is a politer way of saying; ‘Others tell lies’.

IMPOTENT INCOMPETENCE:

Since we deliberately took down the company web sites for now, because of plagiarism, my peers constantly try and stop me sounding off, simply because it intimidates the bundles of incompetence within the industry – strangely those who get all the jobs. Hence, don’t use that nasty bastard Geg Hopkins, besides he is too expensive. That my dear friends is the crux of the matter ‘the cost’. Going for the cheapest is a terminal disease – literally in some cases. Hence the Chinese invasion of just about everything from Garibaldi biscuits to huge telecom switches such as Huewai.  As I have stated before – ” Upstart  - Have computer (with pirate Windows) and Gold Wave (also pirate) or Adobe Premier (pirate) – anyone can do’ …… and to verify that,  bedroom jobbies are everywhere. They too are quick to tell everyone that I am expensive and it rubs off. Amazingly huge corporations go to these places because their incompetent management hire incompetent people  and make them responsible for advertising or setting up Call Centres and so on.  Of course there is talent out there and more to the point, of course there are very capable people who might not be artistically talented, but have the nous to know where to go to get it and thus recommend it, but then the client goes and rejects quality against cost. Ah, but not if it is something they can touch, feel and see, such as a Mercedes. Now the clients or client representative within knows better of course, suddenly perking up and speaking for the entire company,  if not the world – or as it appears in their small minds.

THE BUSINESS PLAN (NOT):

So large companies NEVER go for the cheapest but oh so cunningly go for the quote one up from the cheapest.  Still they are tendering for art, which is a sin in this business. Well here’s the rub; 30 years ago and until perhaps 10 years ago, I was ‘the word’ in production. So for example  a professional radio ad produced/directed/recorded by me costs say $300 (it doesn’t); opportunist and deluded Spielbergs see it as easy money because they know the client’s mentality and that so many do not perceive a difference between shit and shit shit!   So we get upstart No.1 setting up down the road charging only $250. They just record verbatim what the now bright spark marketing master’s interpretation of what they think is simply magic. Crap voice, no discerned direction ability, just pap basically.  Same with video and because there are TWO DIMENSIONS to video, we have even more instant experts…… come on, they can now see something as well –  WOW!!!!!!  Furthermore, it is in colour and we can add so many built in effects. Now, Op No.1 is making a killing at $250, with walk-ins flying in the door and there is only me and him to choose from.  I am getting only my solid, discerning, long time, will never change, quality customers who pay for what they get.   What Op No.1 fails to realize is that problems will arise because there are far far far far more deluded Spielbergs and opportunists out there than professionals.  Suddenly,  further down the road a deluded Spielberg No.2 sets up and they only charge $200 because they know that Op No.1 charges $250, and they want the business.  No.1 is suffering badly now and low and behold  feels even more shitty to discover that No.2 happens to be one of the guys who set up No.1 in the first place but wasn’t getting enough cut.  Again, client mentality lets these guys continue to ride high.  Soon No.3 and 4 have set up and the price is now around $80.  In walks some – incredibly adept at this -Lebanese – even the Indians in Dubai never went that cheap!  This my dear reader is what you hear on radio and see on TV, or listen to down awful telephone lines, such as ……. I don’t need to embarrass any particular company, they know who they are….. Don’t they?   No they don’t!!!! They really have no idea and when you bring it to their attention, these bosses act so incredibly surprised explaining that; ‘we went to the professionals, we like what we have’ !!!!   It creates a terrible corporate image but they just don’t see it.

So basically, to make millions here in particular, ‘incompetence’  rules and  rocks – just take the money and run and say nice things about the client; who incidentally thinks he or she is a fully fledged expert in anything radio, TV or print anyway

IRONY:

Think of the money that someone like Mena Telecom can call on, yet listen to their awful, noisy, amateur media on their Call Centre lines. It is the very same voices and prompts as Batelco use, which is very confusing for the customer/caller. But then so do most of the others without a hint of professional uniqueness or individual identity.  a) It is cheap b) Able to be done very quickly. c) Those in position really do not associate any importance to bad media such as this.  Oh they jump if they hear someone say something bad about the company and happen to understand the language. However, the latter is rarely an issue because the media is so well controlled and such a lack of options. No  local newspaper or station is ever going to report or comment on anything controversial about a company for example for fear of losing advertising revenue.  Hello Gulf Air. My God, they come in for some stick, but then it is the nature of the beast.  They have had to get used to some pretty wild stick and I for one now respect their ability to handle it a little more openly.  I think Batelco do well as well. (Sorry, my international readers, I am talking about large local companies, but the same is happening in a town near you. British radio media is in a dreadful state and we all know it, but you cannot challenge the luvvies running it)

Going back to our opportunists; the very sad thing (Oh the tears of sympathy are drowning me) for No.1 upstart was their business plan had flaws.  For sure they would get a finite run of business.  (Like many things. For example; each time a new ‘expatriate focused’ bar opens here, it has heydays for about 6 months until another comes along and the crowd start going there, leaving a deserted hole). Make the money while you can.  Same for anything really, so No.1 opportunist should have charged $299.99 while the going was good, because those same ignorant clients would have felt so magnanimous saving 1 cent, there is no way they would have come to me.   Thus No.1 potentially lost $49.99 on each of the thousand or so chronic jobs they managed to con in that good time.

NO ART

So troublesome for now and the future is the fact that intangible industry such as art, media and even human resources is looked down upon as just a job filler because it is perceived as that;  ’no skills required’. Marketing boys and girls by the zillion, all with MBAs up their ying yangs and gelled spiky hair as if part of the uniform to-boot, churn out this rubbish with such conviction.  A degree in marketing means zilch if you have no creative or artistic perception, but still the world over we find the industry full of non events who can balance a budget while getting well fed and watered by desperate agencies on expense accounts who want those biscuits.

Let me just say that I/we have NEVER gone out to sell a single thing in our entire existence. EVERYTHING I/we have ever done has come by recommendation and we work in many countries with very little now if anything in Bahrain. However, so very many approaches never come to fruition and it is always to do with money. It is disappointing flattery, but an honour to be recognized as among the best in the first place. Yes, the phone goes regularly as someone flicks through the Yellow Pages looking for a facility. NEVER ONCE  - can I remember one of those enquiries coming to anything. They are simply walk-ins ringing around for the cheapest.  We never hear from them again.

HOW DID IT GET SO BAD?

Education, culture, agenda, religion, lazy, fear to be different?  I really don’t know the answer to that, but I have my suspicions in ‘numbers’. Genius only shines rarely in huge numbers. Then again, I find monkey see, monkey do performance profiles everywhere. The ProNoun Virus, the “your call is important to us” syndrome.  He or she does it, so it must be law, you will do it.  20 years ago, radio spots were put at peak times at say 7-30 news, yet still today we find new recruits placing media at the same times, same news paper ears and so on,  having looked at some old file at what happened way back and now become an instant expert. Never mind that there might be no news at 7-30 now or the newspaper no longer exists, that doesn’t matter, the smooth talk of confidence to the client of how original your plan is and how great skill went into it, done deal,  it is sold.  As much as I like Indians and their great contribution in many fields, I suspect that some of this attitude or misconception is an Indian thing which has been indoctrinated or passed on over the generations – just like some people still call 100 fils a ‘Rupee”.  It is like some sort of kindergarten rule; “No, don’t say this, don’t do that, the people will not understand it, they are not ready for this yet”. Hence the airwaves are full of 2CTs and inane people having even more inane conversations, simply because it went before  - so that must be the rule.

Politicians all over the world and now many journalists in broadcast speak like that; patronizing sentences, stating the bland obvious.  Just take the recent pig flu or the snow storms in the UK. Ministers come on the news channels and say: ‘Wash your hands’ or ‘We advise you to be very careful on the roads today, the snow is very slippery because there is unlaying ice.  If you have to go out, dress yourself in some warm clothes’.  DUH!!!!!  Wait!  They will be telling men how to pee next and to remember to lift the seat and women to remain seated during the entire performance – We all take it like we are programmed robots.  Maybe we are!  The dumbing down of society. It is painful to listen to, but if you criticize it, you become the ‘out of touch – right wing zealot’

So, until I read the blog I speak of above, I rarely hear of or see anyone else speaking out in print about the absolutely dreadful state of radio and television here or anywhere for than matter, so it continues with no shame .  Mahmood’s den used to have a go now and again and he seems to be back in full vigour and I love him, even if some of his followers print a lot of crap about my web sites that don’t exist.   Of course Mahmood hits social issues as well, which is beyond the scope of this site and not really my business.

I also recently read a letter in the local Gulf Daily News, which complained of the chronic IVR/Call Centre lines or the ridiculous amount of banner advertising on every post.  If a cleaner accidently left a brush outside a door, someone will have put an poster on it in 10 seconds. In the letter, the lady wrote; ‘Nobody seems to care about standards and nobody will respond”.  Nobody did!  If I write, they would never print it anyway.

The public accept it, the great public accept so many things media related and you wonder why. Ludicrous and indiscriminate blocking of web sites; a software disastrously slowing down each and every one of our Internet connections because it is forever scanning IP addresses. WHY? Because of incompetent, rip-off, creatively dead TV companies who cannot fathom or will not invest in their own technology to protect their service. (Nor produce or develop local arts or programming).  Just don’t get me started on the Showtime/Orbit thing.  Sky News used to be included in the package with Oribit until they lost the franchise  and never told anyone.  We kept paying the same subscription for 15 years.  They bring it back and demand we pay more money for it.  Furthermore they have absolutely NO ANSWER to that when you call and complain.

So why should the public suffer for these cowboys?  We do, we just accept it.  Still there is more to come. Blocking the UK lottery sites, I suppose for religious bigotry, a lottery which cannot be played by Bahrainis anyway or anyone without a UK address.   Are we at such low intelligence levels or we just fear our jobs and existence so keep stum?

As for amateur dramatics, maybe so many delude themselves into subliminally thinking they are just as good or better, so the media badness does not intimidate.

So we are left with bad grammar, ridiculous concepts, crap IVR systems everywhere (Interactive Voice Response). Never thought about it?  No you probably havn’t. Just listen to Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait, or any of the major banks come to that, tell me you don’t think they are the abomination of badness.

So it is not just radio; watch an MBC channel or FOX SERIES – yes free to air and I support their concept, but I just cannot sit and watch the abysmal advertisements.  Again, Lebanese knowing how to make money in media. I just watched something for Knorr Soup.  The 2CT format, supposedly a husband and wife I guess, sitting having dinner. She tastes the soup and asks him where he got the ingredients.  All ham acting of course.  He replies that he travelled the world for them, just as all good husbands do while their wives have no idea where they are.  Then he so romantically slips the sealed packet to his wife across the table. You know the scene… we all have sealed packets of soup on the tables while we eat.  As he passes he looks dreamingly into her eyes as if he just pissed his pants and says something on the lines of; ‘It is even tastier with you”.  Well short of Indian scripts calling wives ‘Pumpkin’ and so on, I assume this was not a Lebanese script.

Then we have the continuation of the SEDAR abominations, some of which seem to be an hour long talking about curtains and the like. A Malaysian girl seems to do most of the voices in all the languages.  I think she does the male voice as well.  Well maybe. i dunno!  It is all so chronic.

I even get told off by my peers for highlighting this, told to STFU, giving others ideas and ‘knowledge’ as if they would take heed and copy.  Ugh!  Er!  I don’t think so.