Al Arab To Adopt New Voice

The Arab region’s latest TV news offering will neither be the channel of the masses nor the channel of the government, according to its creator, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud.

In an exclusive interview with Gulf Business, Prince Alwaleed, the chairman and founder of Kingdom Holding Company, revealed that Al Arab, his new channel, would be somewhere between Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya.

“Al Jazeera is considered as the channel of the Arab masses and Al Arabiya is thought to be the channel of the governments. I don’t believe that it is the right choice, or the only choice that the Arab people should have,” he said.

Al Arab will adopt an evolutionary approach to news, he said.

“A great many changes are needed in the Arab world, and these can be achieved by orderly means and not necessarily by violence. Revolutions are not only disruptive and exact a heavy toll in lives and material, but they also often have unknown and unpredictable consequences,” Alwaleed said.

The channel is being launched in partnership with Bloomberg, and will broadcast internationally in Arabic. It will be headquartered in Bahrain, and is expected to go live sometime in the latter part of 2012.