Saudi prince confirms news channel by year-end
October 7, 2014
By Chris Forrester
Billionaire Saudi media mogul, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz’s promised new Arabic-language news channel, Alarab, is to launch by the end of the year.
Based in Bahrain, the all-news channel will directly compete with Al Jazeera, MBC’s Al Arabiya, Sky News Arabia plus dozens of other news outlets not least Nile News out of Cairo.
The prince is a major shareholder in 21st Century Fox, and owns the Rotana movies-to-music suite of channels.
Alarab is based at Bahrain’s World Trade Centre, and has a partnership agreement with Bloomberg and will transmit 5 hours of business-focussed news during the day.