BBC Arabic TV news station to start competing with Al-Jazeera next week

LONDON — The British Broadcasting Corp. will launch an Arabic-language television news channel next week in a bid to challenge Al-Jazeera and other popular Middle East TV news outlets.

The move into television news for viewers in North Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf is part of a major restructuring for the British broadcaster.

It has already closed some radio stations in eastern Europe to divert resources to the Arabic-speaking world.

BBC officials say the channel will begin telecasts next Tuesday with 12 hours of programming a day.

Current plans are to expand that to 24 hours a day within months.

The British-government funded network adds that it will provide the service free to viewers who have access to satellite or cable news systems.

The BBC says it had to move into TV broadcasting to remain a major player in the highly competitive region.

“We’ve been there for more than 70 years on radio and more recently online, but all the research shows that TV is the dominant medium in the Middle East now,” a spokesman said.

Nigel Chapman, the BBC’s director of world service, said the new service would offer impartial news and analysis and hoped to have 20 million viewers by 2010.

He said market research surveys show a strong demand for BBC TV service in the Middle East.

“The main reason people give is quite simple: They believe the BBC will provide an independent news service they can trust,” he said.

The BBC is funded by the British government, which provided $500 million for the current fiscal year.

The new channel will be headquartered at BBC facilities in London and will rely on the BBC’s existing network of foreign correspondents. In addition, there will be a number of Arabic-speaking presenters and anchors.

Adel Darwish, political editor of the IC Group of Middle Eastern magazines, said the BBC still enjoys a good reputation with many people in the region despite some hostility toward Britain because of its involvement in the Iraq war.

He said the BBC’s extensive news gathering operation, and its perceived lack of bias, will make it a strong competitor, but that its mammoth bureaucracy and a fall in journalistic standards in recent years will be handicaps.

“The BBC is living on its old reputation. In the years after World War II, people would say that if they heard it on the BBC, it must be true,” he said.

“That reputation, and the fact that the station will be free, should help it in the first few months. But they will have to prove themselves after that,” he added.

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