![]() “From my point of view, after I give them a license all I care is that they will be objective and law-abiding,” says Chen. The station will run 24 hours a day, offering family programming, entertainment, “infotainment,” sports, reality shows – anything that will resonate with the Israeli-Arab sector, with no government interference. We wanted to encourage them to take the risk,” says Chen. In the third year, they should have their own news department. “For the first two years, they won’t have to create news programs for themselves, but can buy programming from other sources. The ministry even changed its licensing requirements to give Hala-TV some commercial advantages. ![]() “We found eight organizations that came together and formed a board of deputies for this channel, and we hope and pray this time it will succeed,” Chen tells ISRAEL21c. So over the past three years, the Communications Ministry appealed to both Arab and Israeli businesses to invest NIS 20 million ($4.6 million) to launch a commercial, independent station. Since cable and satellite stations aren’t permitted to take advertising, two previous attempts to start an Arabic TV station were scrapped for lack of funds. The Israeli public-service channel is supposed to offer Arabic programming but unfortunately nobody is really watching it because Arab citizens feel that public channels are not objective.” “It is really sad that 20 percent of Israeli citizens don’t have their own economic, social and cultural channel. ![]() “The Communications administration, Minister Moshe Kachlon and myself wanted to build this channel for a long time,” says Nitzan Chen, the ministry’s chief regulator and chairman for cable and satellite TV broadcasting. “According to our research, people are waiting to have their own station that talks to them and about them,” says Atrash. “But there are no local TV stations where they can learn about local issues,” he stresses. About 10 percent of those households also subscribe to local Israeli cable stations HOT or YES. Most of Israel’s 1,200,000 Arab households receive worldwide broadcasts in Arabic via satellite dish, and they get local Israeli channels as well, according to Atrash. Atrash, an Israel-Arab who lives in Haifa, tells ISRAEL21c that “hala” is Arabic for “hello.” “Our mission is to give people some good information and entertainment, to be a mirror of the local Arabic community in Israel,” says Jozef Atrash, executive director of Hala-TV. Israel’s Communications Ministry has just granted a license to the state’s first independent Arabic-language TV station, to start broadcasting later in 2011. In addition the channel will be available on OSN channel 122 in HD and 123 in SD, Etisalat eLife channel 234 and du channel 16.Jozef Atrash, executive director of Hala-TV. Sky News Arabia will be broadcast free-to-air on Nilesat 201, Transponder 14 and on ArabsatBadr 4, Transponder 15. “Our fresh, fast paced, continuous rolling news coverage and our completely integrated multimedia offering means our viewers get the breaking news first, whenever they want, in the format they want it.” With these distribution deals Sky News Arabia can deliver on that promise, online, on mobile and tablet devices and with the widest reach on television. In a first for the region, the network will also be available across all multimedia platforms from launch with apps available for iPads and smartphones as well as a rich content website at Nart Bouran, head of Sky News Arabia, said: “The key objective of any news organization is to provide accurate, independent breaking news 24 hours a day to widest possible audience. The news network will also broadcast free-to-air on Arabsat and Nilesat across the Arab world, and, subject to regulatory approvals, be carried on the BSkyB platform in the UK and free-to-air on Astra for viewers in the UK and Europe respectively. ![]() Sky News Arabia has also concluded agreements with Eurostar, a leading provider of multimedia services, to make the channel available in hotels across the Mena region as well as with Livestation for worldwide live internet streaming, a statement said. They include OSN and the Abu Dhabi TV Network in High Definition and the Etisalat eLife TV and du IPTV platforms in Standard Definition. Sky News Arabia, a 24-hour Arabic language news channel set for launch on May 6, has signed distribution deals with a number of television platforms.
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