Kuwait Times is one of two English language daily newspapers in Kuwait along with Arab Times. Our tour this morning was led by the press manager and a few other staff members such as one guy whose job consists of reading and scanning through Arabic language newspapers to find stories worth translating to an English paper. The paper's photographer also took several photos of our group so we will be looking for our pictures in the paper soon.
We visited the commercial printing press and also the paper's printing press and got some great photos and a look at how Kuwait Times delivers their product to readers. We talked a little bit about how things have changed for newspapers recently and our guides said that the same issues facing most papers in the US are relevant in Kuwait. Kuwait Times depends on advertising for profit, as their subscriptions and sales from daily papers are not enough to sustain a business. Advertising has fallen some since the economic collapse in 2008, and several papers in Kuwait have folded but now two English language dailies remain. Advertising and sales can be particularly difficult at times for a paper such as KT because their target audience is not the majority population of their area. British and American expatriates and readers of that variety make up much of the target reading audience and thus much of the target advertising audience. Our guide said that papers in Kuwait have not gone behind pay walls on their websites yet and he doesn't foresee it happening anytime soon.
The majority of today was spent at Marina Mall where we had an outstanding lunch. I have a good photo of my dessert in the slideshow below. Our friend Ali Najim led us on a tour of the Marina FM 88.8 studio before we appeared as guests on his show. His show is the most popular radio program not only in Kuwait but the entire gulf region and I am grateful to have been able to watch him in his natural environment behind the mic.
On our tour of Marina FM we spoke with the music director of the station who said that he primarily uses Pro Tools. Another guy said he depends most heavily on Adobe Audition. It was interesting to see that the professionals at the top of the business use the same software that ASU students are taught to use.
After Ali's show we went to the theater to watch Captain Phillips. The movie was in English with French, English, and Arabic subtitles. That's the first and likely only time I'll ever watch a movie in three different languages of subtitles but I thoroughly enjoyed that unique experience.
I have several photos from today in the slideshow here