Monday, December 10th, 2007
Text of press release from pan-European TV news channel EuroNews on 10 December
EuroNews has won the European Unions call for tenders to extend its offering to include in Arabic. This new addition will be the eighth language version broadcast by EuroNews.
EuroNews won the European Commissions call for tenders, launched in June 2007, which was to select an international news channel with the ability to produce and broadcast programming in Arabic, 24 hours a day and seven days a week. A service agreement between the channel and the Commission was signed in Brussels on 6 December 2007.
EuroNews already broadcasts in seven languages simultaneously (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish). Arabic will become EuroNews eighth fully-fledged language, and the service will be launched by the channels newsroom in 2008.
In the coming months, EuroNews will recruit a team of 35 people who will work at EuroNews head office in Lyon, France. In parallel, the channel will adapt its technical facilities (production, broadcasting and distribution) to host this new language version. The Arabic service will be broadcast across EuroNews entire network of 35 satellites, thus making the Arabic-service signal available worldwide. From the start of 2008, the channels sales teams will invite all cable, satellite, ADSL/broadband and mobile-phone operators worldwide to add the Arabic version of EuroNews to their offerings.
In launching an Arabic version, EuroNews will meet two objectives: to cater for Arabic-speaking Europeans, and to extend distribution of the channel to Arabic-speaking countries.
Philippe Cayla, Chairman and CEO of EuroNews, commented: The addition of Arabic is a very important milestone in EuroNews multi-language strategy. With Arabic, the channel will be able to grow its audience among Arabic-speaking populations in Europe and in the Mediterranean basin. In Europe, the fact that EuroNews is available in Arabic will definitely help Arabic-speaking populations to better understand the framework of European policies and the issues at stake. In the Mediterranean basin, and in the Arabic-speaking world in general, where EuroNews already has a substantial audience for its English and French versions, the channel will be able to grow its audience very significantly and become the standard-setting international news channel. Television viewers already appreciate EuroNews clear, balanced approach to international news, especially Middle East events. EuroNews wishes and hopes that its Mediterranean shareholders in the Arab world (ENTV in Algeria, ERTU in Egypt, ERTT in Tunisia) will help to raise EuroNews profile in their respective countries, and that the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU) will be able to extend this effort to the other countries in the Arab world.
EuroNews is distributed worldwide. It is available in 200 million homes in 130 countries on the five continents.
(Source: EuroNews press release, Lyon, in English 10 Dec 07 via BBC Monitoring)
