And new walls rise

It is the last day of the first quarter-year of 2007 and thus a suitable moment for drawing balance-sheet conclusions. Although sometimes it's hard to know exactly what conclusion to draw.

In the media business there has been much attention drawn to the potential for abuse of premium messaging and telephony, in the United Kingdom in particular. Much has been made of the fact that consumers have perhaps been duped while broadcasters and service providers have been enriched. And this has all been in the context of ancillary revenues generated by channels whose main earnings still come from conventional spot advertising.

Here in the Gulf, however, there are numerous satellite channels whose entire revenue stream consists of earnings from SMS and IVR services. I would not have been surprised if questions similar to those posed in the UK were asked here in the Sandlands.

But no. Premium messaging and telephony have come under scrutiny, yes, but from an entirely different perspective. The headline in GulfNews reads "Negative media threaten national security". From the interview, a couple of paragraphs...

The [Dubai] police chief warned that if they are not stopped, "every house will lose a son, every mother will lose a daughter, and every house will lose stability. Media ministers and Arab rulers must take up the issue of interactive TV channels."

He said there is a "psychological error" in the minds of the group of people who run such channels, as they do not mind spreading corruption in the society with the aim of destroying it. He said anyone who sells his beliefs, religion, reputation, family and himself, finds it easy to sell his country.

It is my fervent wish that this article had been datelined 1 April 2007.