BBC goes all out to reach Middle East audiences
The BBC is dropping 10 language services to focus on a new Arabic channel to take on Al Jazeera.
In a bold move to establish itself as the top news provider in the Middle East, the
British Broadcasting Service (BBC) announced Tuesday that it was vastly expanding its services to the Middle East and creating a new BBC
Arabic language cable channel. The
Times Online reports that the BBC is
making the move at this time because its No. 1 rival in the region, the upstart cable news network Al Jazeera, has been touting its new English-language channel, which includes such well-known journalists as Sir David Frost.
The Scotsman reports that the new venture marks the first time the BBC World Service has launched a publicly funded international TV service "and marks
a departure for the World Service, which has hitherto been known for radio broadcasting." The new Arabic BBC service is slated to launch in 2007.
The move is being strongly backed by Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, who announced the changes in Parliament Tuesday. In order to fund the new venture, he said the BBC will
cease foreign language broadcasts to 10 countries. Services in Hungarian, Bulgarian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Slovak, Slovene, Kazakh, and Thai will cease transmission by March, reports the
Daily Telegraph.
The
Guardian reports that the BBC's brand and editorial resources are "
deemed strong enough and sufficiently independent to attract an audience repelled by the American CNN network."
The move is part of the Foreign Office's effort to become more proactive in both promoting liberal democracy as well as British and EU policies towards the Middle East, often significantly different from US ones, and of combating the wilder claims of Islamic radicalism.
The Independent reports that the BBC's decision to start the new channel is a "backhanded compliment" to Al Jazeera, the cable channel that actually rose out of the ashes of the BBC's first attempt to establish a TV presence in the Middle East. Although Al Jazeera is popular throughout the Arab world, it is
despised by the Bush administration, which has accused of it aiding terrorists. Al Jazeera has alleged in the past that its facilities have been targeted by US forces in war zones. But as The Independent notes, this has not always been entirely to the channel's disadvantage.
"The more [US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld] attacks us, the more popular we are with our viewers," the station's communications director, the surreally named Jihad Ballout has said.
The Financial Times reports that the growing popularity of Al Jazeera has also
boosted the political influence of Qatar, the base for Al Jazeera and the source of much of its financing.
By some estimates, Al Jazeera now has a global audience to rival the BBC's – 50 million viewers and growing.
The Guardian reports that Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds, said that the new service will work only if it establishes itself as
independent right from the start, a problem that has plagued the US-backed Al Hurra network, which has largely failed to find an Arab audience.
"The new BBC station has the potential to compete strongly with Al Jazeera. If it learns from the mistakes of Al Hurra, adopting an even-handed editorial policy instead of becoming a mouthpiece for propaganda, it will engage the many intellectuals and politicians who have shunned the American channel," he said.
The Guardian also reports, however, that some BBC staffers are wary of the new enterprise, saying that the backing of the British Foreign Office means that "even if it is editorially objective, the new venture may be perceived as too closely aligned with Foreign Office objectives."
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