Today’s long-awaited global launch of Al Jazeera’s English 24-hour news service will be unavailable to most Australians.
Despite being able to reach an estimated 80 million households worldwide, the channel will only penetrate 1% of the Australian population.
More than a year after it first announced plans for an English-language version, the controversial Arabic news network, launches Al Jazeera English today in 47 countries including the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy and Hong Kong.
Sydney-based multicultural subscription broadcaster UBI World TV has secured the local rights to the service, which will be called Al Jazeera International in Australia.
UBI, which broadcasts 80 TV and 40 radio channels in 12 languages, has only 200,000 viewers in Australia, giving the station a potential Australian audience of only 1% of the population.
Al Jazeera International will be the first English-language program offering from UBI, which said it was Australia’s largest multicultural TV and radio provider with a line-up of 120 TV and radio channels.
UBI subscribers who pay $60 a month for the World TV Plus package will have access to the program, which will broadcast 24 hours a day, from later this month.
The station is also understood to be talking to Canberra-based IPTV provider Transact along with other carriers.
In addition to the television broadcast, Al Jazeera English will be available as a free live stream to internet users worldwide.
Al Jazeera’s English language website, aljazeera.net/english will be re-launched later this week with live streams of the channel together with RSS feeds, e-mail newsletters and interactive discussion boards.
