News Broadcasting
Middle East Broadcasting to launch 24-hour news channel in mid-February
CAIRO: Satellite broadcaster Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC) will launch a 24-hour Arabic news channel, Al Arabiya, in mid-February with an estimated investment of US $200 million to compete with Al Jazeera, the Qatar based channel.
Arabiya’s all-news format will include sports, business, commentaries, panel discussions and hourly bulletins, with an emphasis on news of particular interest in the Arab world.
An Adage report quotes MBC officials as saying that Al Arabiya, slated to go live between 15-20 February, will have a non-sensationalist approach and should be perceived by the Western world as more balanced than Al Jazeera.
The channel is backed by MBC, Lebanon’s Hariri Group, and other investors from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states. Content will be produced by newly formed Middle East News, with a staff strength of about 400.
“People in this region are lacking a credible source of news,” said MBC operations director Assad Abu al Jadail. “Jazeera made the breakthrough [in news] but you don’t always know the agenda.”
Part of Arabiya’s long-term aim is to promote stability and democracy in the region, he said.
Ad agency executives in the Middle East are eager to see Arabiya but said MBC hasn’t told them much yet. They said MBC should do well financially because it has a powerful ad-sales operation and has developed a good reputation for fairness with its flagship MBC channel, which runs general entertainment and an hour per day of news programs.
Interest from advertisers
Jadail was quoted as saying that no major ad contracts have been signed as yet but that the network is seeing interest from advertisers. Advertisers on MBC include Procter & Gamble, Unilever’s Lipton, PepsiCo and Volkswagen.
The state department said it has no plans to run its advertising campaign promoting the US as an Arab-friendly nation on Al Arabiya.
WPP group’s JWT/TMI Beirut CEO Roy Haddads was quoted in Adage as saying that MBC should appeal to multinational and Saudi Arabian advertisers that don’t want to support Al Jazeera. “The whole objective is to counteract the sensational approach of Jazeera,” Haddads was quoted as saying.
Impact of war
One wild card is the pending war with Iraq. While observers believe a war could mean high ratings for news coverage on Al Arabiya, it’s hard to tell whether US advertisers will avoid advertising on the station in the event of war. However, multinational advertisers often have local ad offices that may continue buying ad time in the region.
MBC was founded 11 years ago by Saudi Sheikh Waleed Al Ibrahim and other Saudi investors. Michel Costandi, business development director, claimed MBC will be self-sustaining in advertising in the first 12 months, an ambitious goal say media experts.
Low ad spending in region
After three years of recession, Middle East advertising spending totals only about $1 billion, Interpublic’s TN Communications chairman Tarek Nour was quoted as saying. Among the satellite channels, MBC captures the most ads, followed by Lebanon’s Future TV and Lebanese Broadcasting Corp., then Al Jazeera. Although Al Jazeera’s owner, the Emir of Qatar, said when he started the station in 1996 that it needs to become self-supporting, advertisers have been wary.
“It’s clear they are having a problem in attracting advertising,” Arabiya’s Haddad was quoted as saying.
At Al Jazeera headquarters in Qatar, executives said they were too busy to comment, says the Adage report.
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
