March 11, 2008	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 2, 1429

DUBAI: Fierce rivals in the Middle East, the two main pan-Arab news channels, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, see Tuesday’s scheduled arrival of broadcasting by BBC Arabic Television as a spur to their own coverage of events.

Al-Jazeera, whose reports from Iraq have frequently upset the US military and whose openness to opposition spokesmen has irritated regional governments, has become hugely popular.

“We do not fear competition,” said Ahmed al-Sheikh, editor-in-chief of the Doha-based, Qatari-funded Al Jazeera.

“In 12 years, we have gained enough experience and a network of correspondents strong enough to reach public opinion. The presence of an additional competitor will only encourage us to do better,” he said.

Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, general director of the rival, Dubai-based Al-Arabiya, said: “The launch of BBC Arabic is certainly positive in more than one aspect. It consolidates the audiovisual world ... as it offers more options to the Arab audiences.”

“It is an additional services presented to Arab audiences in a different form,” said Rashed, whose channel built with Saudi capital celebrated its fifth anniversary last week.

The BBC new service will have its work cut out competing with the now well-established channels.

Sheikh said Al-Jazeera has a work force of 1,300 employees, including 50 journalists at its Doha-headquarters and 85 correspondents around the world.

The channel had 32 offices.

Al-Jazeera revolutionised television news in the Arab world after its creation in 1996. Al-Arabiya launched eight years later in the wake of Saudi-Qatari rivalry has also battled hard to gain Arab public opinion.

And as the primarily English-language BBC launches its second attempt at penetrating the Middle East with an Arabic television channel to complement its Arabic radio broadcasts, it also faces a challenge in some English-language news.

In 2006, Al Jazeera launched its own 24-hour English-language news service to 80 million cable and satellite households around the world.

Al Jazeera English stands alone from the Arabic-language channel, with a different editorial team and a news agenda that focuses less on the Middle East and more on issues from the developing world.

Besides the two heavyweight Arabic broadcasters, several other Arab news channels are part of the competition for viewers. Created since 2003, the year of the US-led invasion of Iraq, they include the US-funded Al-Hurra, Iran’s Al-Alam, France 24 and Roussia Al-Yawm (Russia Today).

BBC Arabic, which will begin broadcasting 12 hours per day before shifting to round-the-clock service in the summer, has a major springboard for the news service the popularity of its radio Arabic service, claimed to have over 13 million listeners a day.—AFP