Tuesday, April 03, 2007

France 24 in Arabic launches on Hot Bird™

The new Arabic version of France 24, which launched yesterday at 1400 UTC, is available through the Hot Bird™ 8 broadcast satellite of Eutelsat Communciations. This new language version joins the French and English versions of France 24, the French international news channel, which are already available to cable and satellite homes across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East through Eutelsat’s Hot Bird™ 7A, Atlantic Bird™ 2 and Eurobird™ 1 satellites.
The daily Arabic schedule of France 24’s third channel runs for four hours, from 1400 to 1800 UTC, and includes a 10-minute news bulletin every 30 minutes, talk shows, business analysis, culture, weather reports and sporting highlights.
“We are very pleased to initiate broadcasts of this new version for Arab-speaking communities in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin which benefits, among others, from Eutelsat’s Hot Bird™ satellites which bring access to over 110 million television homes, of which over 47 million are satellite homes,” said France 24’s COO Jean-Yves Bonsergent.“This is a major event for us. Less than four months since launch, we are now broadcasting in three languages, six months ahead of our schedule.”
How to watch France 24 in Arabic:
Hot Bird™ 8 (13 degrees East)
Downlink frequency: 12.322 GHz
Polarisation: horizontal
(Source: Eutelsat/R Netherlands Media Network Weblog)