Al Jazeera Arabic TV station will on Wednesday at 12.00 GMT launch Al Jazeera English - its English language international news and current affairs channel - to over 80 million cable and satellite households worldwide. Aiming to provide a Middle East perspective that challenges the dominance of Western media, Al Jazeera English will also be available on broadband, IPTV, ADSL, terrestrial and mobile phone platforms, the company said in a statement. The new channel will seek to rival CNN and BBC World.
The channel's groundbreaking Doha-based Arabic sister service was launched in 1996, offering a non-Western perspective on world events which also criticised Arab regimes and broadcast dissenting views. After making its name in the Afghan war with exclusive footage of Osama bin Laden, it has drawn fierce criticism from the United States and some Arab governments with its reporting from Iraq, where it has aired images of dead US soldiers and prisoners of war.
"Our launch figure is over double the original target we set for ourselves, and is
unprecedented in the broadcasting industry - no other international news
channel has launched with such a high number of homes across the world," said Wadah Khanfar, director general of the Al Jazeera Network.
"We will continue to build on this figure after launch and will be looking to expand our reach significantly. This is another reflection of the strength of the Al Jazeera brand," he added.
Al Jazeera English, headquartered in the Qatari capital, Doha, is the first English language news channel to be based in the Middle East. It will have broadcast centres in Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur, in London and in Washington DC.
"Al Jazeera English will balance the information flow from South to North, providing accurate, impartial and objective news for a global audience from a grass roots level, giving voice to different perspectives from under-reported regions around the world, " the channel claimed in a statement.
Al Jazeera's English language website, aljazeera.net/english, is due to be re-launched on Wednesday at the same time Al Jazeera English goes on air. The new website "will reflect the channel's look and feel and editorial content," and provide live streams of the channel together with newsfeeds, e-mail newsletters and interactive discussion
boards, to the one billion users of the Internet worldwide, Al Jazeera said.
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