Media Guardian

By Owen Gibson

11 October 2006

The BBC World Service yesterday announced the launch of its third major television channel when the Foreign Office agreed to fund an Iranian language service to the tune of £15m a year.

The latest attempt by the World Service to branch out beyond its traditional radio operations into multimedia and satellite TV was announced by the chancellor, Gordon Brown. "The BBC's proposed Farsi TV channel is an editorially independent specialist TV service for the people of Iran," Mr Brown said. "And I am pleased to announce that we are making available the resources for this today."

World Service director Nigel Chapman last year closed 10 language services, mainly in former eastern bloc countries, in order to reinvest in tri-media services in the Middle East and developing world.

As media consumption habits change around the world, he argues, it is increasingly important for the World Service to launch TV and internet services. Next year it will launch an Arabic TV news channel to challenge al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based broadcaster, which will soon launch its own English-language service.

Mr Chapman said there was a "very strong broadcasting case" for the new service. It is scheduled to launch in 2008 and will build on the reputation of existing World Service radio and internet operations. He said it would "draw upon the reporting strength of the BBC within the region and around the world".

By transmitting the channel via satellite, the BBC hopes to circumvent restrictions placed on the media by the Iranian authorities. Reporters Sans Frontières ranks the country 164th out of 172 in its press freedom index. About 100 publications have been closed down since 2000 and the BBC's Persian website is routinely blocked.

The BBC estimates that 20m Iranian households have satellite TV out of a population of about 70 million. In contrast with the Arabic-speaking world, where dozens of news channels vie for viewers' attention, Mr Chapman said it would enjoy "early mover advantage" in Iran.

Like the Arabic service, the channel will be based in London but use reporters around the globe. It will initially broadcast for eight hours a day, with half its airtime given over to news and current affairs. The remainder will be devoted to programme makers such as Sir David Attenborough, using the BBC's catalogue of factual and documentary programmes.

But the plans are also likely to prompt renewed claims that the World Service, funded by grant in aid from the Foreign Office to the tune of £245m a year, is becoming an instrument of foreign policy. Mr Chapman said he would "absolutely refute" any such suggestion, insisting that the 70-year-old institution remained as independent as ever.