LONDON, March 3, 2008 (AFP) — The British Broadcasting Corporation's new Arabic-language cable and satellite television channel will launch next week, bosses said Monday, laying down the gauntlet to existing pan-Arab stations.
BBC Arabic Television will go live at 1000 GMT on Tuesday March 11, initially broadcasting for 12 hours a day before becoming a 24-hour operation later this year.
It is the BBC's first publicly-funded international television service and comes 11 years after a previous foray into the Middle East television market ended in failure after editorial disagreements with its Saudi backers.
The venture -- initially costing 19 million pounds (24.8 million euros, 37.7 million dollars) and 25 million pounds when it becomes round-the-clock -- aims to provide the Middle East's only "tri-media" (TV, radio and online) service.
But it came at the cost of more than 200 jobs in 10 language services, mainly eastern European, as part of a radical restructuring of BBC World Service radio.
The new television channel "will reflect the breadth of the Arab audience's interests," BBC Arabic head Hosam El Sokkari said, announcing the launch.
And he drew the battlelines with established broadcasters in the region like the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, claiming the new channel will better serve Arab audiences.
"It can be their ears and eyes -- not just in the countries where people live, but throughout the region and around the rest of the world," he said.
BBC Arabic Television, which aims to build on the existing BBC Arabic radio and Internet services, will be free-to-air for anyone with a satellite or cable connection in north Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf.
The director of BBC World Service, Nigel Chapman, said they were boosting coverage in the Middle East because satellite news channels had changed the media landscape there over the last decade.
"There is no doubt that television is now the dominant medium for consuming news in the region," he added.
"Without a BBC news presence in Arabic on television, we run the risk of always being second to other television sources, despite the quality of our radio and new media offers."
Chapman told reporters they hoped to attract 20 million viewers per week by 2010 and 35 million users per week for all three services.
Unlike BBC television, which is funded by a yearly licence fee from all domestic users, BBC World Service broadcasting is paid with a direct grant from the government, although it maintains editorial independence.
For 2007-8, its grant from the Foreign Office totalled 252 million pounds, rising to 271 million pounds by 2010-11.
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