Backed by government financing, Germany's public international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, is preparing to beam as much as 24 hours daily of news programming in Arabic this autumn. France's yet-to-be-named CNN-style channel is in development for a year-end opening, along with a Web site in Arabic and later in 2007 an Arabic television version.
The state-owned Russia Today has similar plans for a Web site and Arabic television along with a $40 million budget, while the U.S.-based news giant CNN is holding back for now, preferring to watch the development of its Arabic Web site, which currently attracts more than 300,000 unique visitors monthly, Karim report.