Al Jazeera International to launch on 15th November

[BGonaSTICK]

More than a year after plans for the channel were announced, Al Jazeera International is finally set to launch on Wednesday 15 November.

The inaugural broadcast from the new English-language news and current affairs channel will start from its Doha headquarters at 12 noon GMT.

The channel's forthcoming launch on 15 November coincides with the 10-year anniversary of Al Jazeera's Arabic language channel.

Wadah Khanfar, director general of the Al Jazeera Network said: "Al Jazeera International will build on the pioneering spirit of Al Jazeera and will carry our media model, based in the South, to the entire world.

"The launching of the English Channel offers the chance to reach out to a new audience that is used to hearing the name of Al Jazeera without being able to watch it or to understand its language.

The new channel will provide the same ground-breaking news and impartial and balanced journalism to the English speaking world."

Al Jazeera International will be the first English-language news channel headquartered in the Middle East.

The broadcaster has been dogged with technical difficulties and earlier this year AJI director of news, Steve Clark told Press Gazette: "Editorially we have been ready for some time and it has been delayed because of the extremely complex technical nature of what we are trying to do.

"We have four major news centres dotted around the world, and we'll be broadcasting from all four of these, 24 hours every day. It is proving quite complex technically.

The channel will broadcast from Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington DC, and will support bureaux worldwide.

Source: Online Press Gazette