Sky News Arabia, the 50-50 JV between BSkyB and Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corp (ADMIC), has launched on the Sky satellite platform in the UK and Ireland.
“The availability of Sky News Arabia on the Sky platform marks an important step in reaching one of the Arab world’s most important overseas communities,” said Nart Bouran, head of Sky News Arabia. “When we launched nearly a year ago, our priority was to target our core markets in the Middle East and North Africa, which we have done successfully. We have taken a number of key steps to expand our distribution since then – making our feed available on Hotbird for European audiences for example – and the UK is one more milestone as we continue to find new ways to reach Arabic speakers wherever they may be.”
Sky News Arabia launched in May 2012; on the Sky platform it becomes one of an increasing number of international news channels, though one of few broadcast in a language other than English.