I was channel hopping and found BBC Arabic on 13E, but at present its showing a testcard and it says BBC Arabic, is this actually going to be a TV channel?
Yes. Don't know the launch date, but the BBC is launching a television channel in Arabic. If that sounds a bit familiar, then yes, such a channel did exist in the mid 90s! Then it was part of BBC Worldwide and was in cooperation with a foreign partner. It closed partly due to a row over editorial content from said parter AIUI. This time it's being run by the BBC World Service.
Yes. Don't know the launch date, but the BBC is launching a television channel in Arabic. If that sounds a bit familiar, then yes, such a channel did exist in the mid 90s! Then it was part of BBC Worldwide and was in cooperation with a foreign partner. It closed partly due to a row over editorial content from said parter AIUI. This time it's being run by the BBC World Service.
Yes the transponder identifier says BBC World Service on it. It must be launching soon I guess.
Sounds right, as Hotbird 13E seems to cover Arabia. I know other Arabic channels are on 13E including Al Jazeera's collection of channels, which I can pick up here.
Sounds right, as Hotbird 13E seems to cover Arabia. I know other Arabic channels are on 13E including Al Jazeera's collection of channels, which I can pick up here.
yeah same here, apparantly this channel was announced in 2005, ready to be launched this autumn, it will be interesting to see the TV presentation side of things.
Interesting use of blue and music from the BBC World Service, I wonder what it will look like when it is all put together as that from what it appears maybe some more music from the World Service could be used?
It was clearly closely related to the international news bulletins in English made for BBC World Service Televisison, one channel of which was aimed at Asia and the other at Europe. These two channels were relaunched as BBC World and BBC Prime respectively, while BBC Arabic soldiered on until around 1996.
The BBC have been recruiting for an Arabic TV service - run by the BBC World Service under government funding NOT by BBC News under licence fee or BBC Worldwide funding. They have also been recruiting for a Farsi service as well AIUI.
The Arabic service is due to launch soon - I guess that the 13E bars are a holding signal for the uplink until a barker is ready.