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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Euro (Arabic) news

Euronews - the European consortium providing news in 7 languages, will be launching on the 12th of July an Arabic feed!

after France 24, Russia Today, DW, BBC Arabic (and years ago US's Al Hurra), a new news channel will be trying to fill the Arabic airwaves emptiness (?) Ok, I'm being ironic, we have so many news channels to watch here in the region, that I am starting to forget there are other things to watch on TV (except those extra short skirts on Arabic music channels)

But the real question is why one more "foreign" channel providing news to the Arab world. What are the governments backing them gaining ? I can understand BBC's Arabic venture (its a brand name easily recognizable in the region) but Arab viewers have no clue who are DW or Russia Today! and to be honest, they do not seem to care.

To be fair, Euronews' feed is probably the least costly of all its competitors (it'll probably just be rehashing of existing feeds). So it might make sense....

I guess I'll now just have to wait for CNN's Arabic broadcast (they already have the Arabic version of their website), but hey, I just remembered! CNN is private (all the others are Government owned), it just wants to make money....well, after all, maybe we won't be watching Larry King in Arabic anytime soon!!!!!!

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