Bahrain picked as home for Alarab

Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed chooses Bahrain over Dubai as the base for the new Alarab TV channel. 

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Bahrain has been chosen over Dubai as the home for Alarab, the Arabic TV-news station being launched by the Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

The news channel, along with Prince Alwaleed's Rotana Media Group, will be based in Bahrain starting next year, according to the state-run Bahrain News Agency.

The agency quoted Sheikh Fawaz bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, president of Bahrain's Information Affairs Authority (IAA).

"The IAA reached an agreement on December 12 to launch Al Arab news channel from Manama", Sheikh Fawaz was reported as saying by the news agency.

Alarab is set to launch in December next year. The 24-hour station is being launched in conjunction with the US media giant Bloomberg, which will support the business news output of the channel.

The Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who is managing Alarab, told The National last month that the news station was choosing between Bahrain and Dubai as a base for the channel.

Mr Khashoggi declined to comment on the decision to base the station in Bahrain when contacted by The National.

The Arabic TV news market is currently dominated by Al Arabiya, based in Dubai, and Al Jazeera, which is funded by the Qatari government.

Another Arabic TV-news station, Sky News Arabia, will launch in Abu Dhabi in Spring of next year.