Saudi Gazette Report

RIYADH — Acting Minister of Media Majed Al-Qasabi said that electronic games are the largest media segment in the Kingdom, which is influenced by all young people. He said that WhatsApp ranks first among all the social media applications with a total 29.5 million users. He said this while outlining the vision of the Ministry of Media at the second edition of Saudi Media Forum, which began in Riyadh on Monday.

In his speech, Al-Qasabi gave a visual presentation on his ministry's vision for the sector, saying that the ministry is the regulating body that sets policies and tariffs and evaluate performance according to its standards.

The minister classified the media concept that it has five segments -audio media, visual media; publishing (newspapers and books), electronic games, and advertisements. He underlined the need to further develop the content presented through these outlets of media.

He noted that electronic games and advertisements were considered broader than what is commonly known in the definition of media content. “Media is a loose word, and we have to look at means such as music applications, blogs, and electronic games as media. “Games will become the largest media as it affects all young people. Where are the young people? They are on video games, digital apps and e-sports, so these will be influential media.”

With regard to newspapers organizations, Al-Qasabi said: “They will be completely privatized and transformed into institutions similar to commercial companies, and their board of directors and editor-in-chief will be chosen by the institutions and shareholders completely, as is the case in commercial companies.”

The minister noted that the economic contribution of the media sector to the Saudi economy is very low. “We examined the situation of the media market in the 20 largest countries in the world. We did not find an advanced presence, neither in the audio-visual media, nor the publishing sector," he said referring to the lack of investors who prefer to enter in this sector. He said that this necessitated government support for its transformation project.

The minister reviewed figures showing the size of the media sector to the gross domestic product (GDP), stating that the media's contribution to the GDP does not exceed 0.4 percent, and the visual media was the highest while the audio media ranked last.

Regarding the contribution of media organizations to creating job opportunities within the country, he said it does not exceed 0.3 percent pointing to the low level of local content in the total digital content on the Internet.

Al-Qasabi revealed that the Saudi Broadcasting Authority, as well as its name, will be restructured. He added that the Kingdom aims to create Saudi content, support and enable local content, and restructure the authority.

The minister confirmed that the most used digital application in Saudi Arabia is WhatsApp with 29.5 million users, while YouTube ranks second with 29.1 million users. There are 26.4 million users for TikTok and 21.2 million subscribers for Snapchat application while Twitter has 15.5 million and Instagram 12.5 million followers.

Facebook application ranked last with 10.8 million subscribers in Saudi Arabia, which is the opposite of the global presence, as the application owned by Mark Zuckerberg leads the first place with 2.9 billion users, followed by YouTube in the global rankings with 2.4 billion, while TikTok is at the bottom, which made available to the world in 2017, and its international users stood at 1.1 billion.