Arab Satellite TV station planned

28 October 1994
REGIONAL

Kuwaiti businessman Mohammed Jassem al-Sager is leading the launch of an $85 million Arabic satellite TV station to be based in Paris. The new station is to be provisionally named TVA, Al-Sager, who is chairman of the Kuwaiti Coast Investment & Development Company and editor-in-chief of the Kuwait daily al-Qabas, told MEED's sister publication Gulf Marketing Review.

Of the $85 million start-up capital, $65 million will be raised by the sale of securities to Gulf and other Arab investors, with limited involvement from non-Arab television networks. The remainder will consist of loans, of which $10 million will be in the form of a shareholders' loan. Revenues are to come mainly from advertising.

Broadcasting from the new station is scheduled to begin in 1995, with a mixture of news, feature films, drama series, live and pre-recorded sport, game shows, cartoons and targeted magazine programmes. The company is entering an already crowded market, with competition coming from the London-based Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC), the Rome-based Orbit Communications Company, and The Egyptian Satellite Channel.

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