Fujairah Media and its Chief Executive Mekki Abdulla have acquired a major stake in Europe's leading jazz radio station, JazzRadio Berlin.
The Berlin Media Authority yesterday announced the granting of a new broadcasting licence to the award-winning commercial station, with Fujairah Radio Network (A Part of The Fujairah Media Group) being 50 per cent shareholders.
The Managing Director of JazzRadio, Mr Julian Allitt, is a former colleague of Mr Abdulla's from English radio station The Bay 96.9 fm.
JazzRadio showed the strongest audience growth out of 19 Berlin stations in July independent audience ratings. Its 300,000 listeners have the highest incomes and educational standard of all radio listeners in the city, Europe's second largest urban population centre. The station's audience also includes the highest proportion of decision-makers of any Berlin radio station.
Over the past 10 years, JazzRadio has won 16 World Medals for the quality of its programming at the New York international Radio Programming Awards, six of them Gold – the highest total of any German radio station.
Mr Allitt said:"We are delighted to have Fujairah Media and Mekki Abdulla as our partners. Berlin is the most competitive radio market in Europe and it is wonderful to have the support of such experienced media professionals who truly understand our business".
Mr Abdulla said today:"We have made this acquisition as a first strategic step into the European radio market. Berlin is a great place to start, as the capital of Germany, which is Europe's richest economy.
"We also believe the jazz format has great potential and we will consider working with Julian Allitt and his team to roll it out in other radio markets".
The Fujairah Radio Network has currently several operations underway internationally in Africa and the Middle East, and is in negotiations in other European markets. "Commercial Radio expansion is one of our main objectives", confirmed Fujairah Media Groups CEO, Mekki Abdulla.
