BBC World Service to launch Arabic channel
The BBC World Service is to launch an Arabic news channel and increase its investment in interactive media under the biggest shake-up the organisation has known in its 70-year history.
The new Arabic channel—the first publicly funded international television service launched by the BBC—will go head-to-head with al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based and financed news channel which is about to launch an English language channel.
Under the restructuring, the BBC World Service will develop new media and video news services in principal markets such as South America, Russia, South Asia and the Middle East. At the same time, the World Service will close 10 language services in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Kazakh, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Thai by March 2006.
The planned investments will cost up to £30m by 2008. The World Service said funding would come through reprioritising its existing grant-in-aid funding from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (its 2005/6 grant is £239m) as well as "a vigorous programme of efficiencies".
The changes follow a strategic review of BBC World Service. Director Nigel Chapman said that while the mix of services had to evolve as the world changed, "the overall core aims of the BBC World Service will remain the same: to provide quality news and information that people trust, which stands out for its independence, authority and objectivity; and to be an open forum for global debate".
He added: "Our new services on television and in new media will be judged by those values just as their distinguished predecessors have been."
The changes have already been approved by the BBC governors and foreign secretary Jack Straw.
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