Euronews is to take its multi-language news service into Persian. The new language will officially go live on October 27 and broadcast 24 hours a day. With the new addition, a further 3 million people will be able to follow Euronews programming.
The launch follows Euronews’ successful bid for a competitive call for tender from the European Union on December 21, 2009 in Brussels. The channel and the European Commission signed a service agreement to extend its programming to include Persian.
Persian is spoken by 126.5 million people in the world. It is an official language in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan but it is also commonly spoken in Bahrain, Uzbekistan and other regions of the world.
The addition of this 10th language version represents a very important step for Euronews in its multilingual strategy, the other languages being Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. A week ahead of the official TV launch, Persian Euronews will be available on the Euronews web site.
For the new service Euronews has recruited 17 Persian speaking journalists who have been integrated into the broadcast operations in the Lyon headquarters over the past few months.
From its launch, Persian Euronews will be immediately available on five satellites from its distribution network: Eutelsat Hot Bird 6, Arabsat Bad-4, Nilesat 101, Asiasat 5 and Eurobird 1 (which will be launched at the end of 2010).
