Owned by the ARY Group of Companies, widely known for its gold business, the news channel named 'ARY One World' will be the first bilingual round-the-clock news channel from Dubai specifically targeting Asian communities, with a focus on Pakistan.
Other channels are: ARY Music, ARY Middle East, ARY India, ARY Pakistan and ARY UK and Europe. The channel has also won sole rights to Cartoon Network, Home Box Office (HBO Movie channel) and AXN (action movie channel) for the Pakistan region.
The channel, in collaboration with Taj television, has also won rights to broadcast cricket from Pakistan for the next five years.
ARY One World, Middle East and Music Channel will also be available on E-vision for UAE viewers.
"We are shifting our head office from London to Dubai Media City and are set to launch the new channels from here in April," said Salman Iqbal, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ARY Digital Television, in an exclusive interview with Gulf News.
He said they would be the first to focus mainly on Asian communities throughout the world, particularly in the UAE, other countries in the Middle East, Europe and America.
"We have established some 40 offices in various countries the world over and have hired hundreds of correspondents for the latest and comprehensive news coverage in English and Urdu."Being a Dubai-based channel, we will especially concentrate on the Asian community in the region in addition to covering all local events and interviews."
Most of the live programmes, interviews and interactive programmes will be telecast from three studios in Dubai. They also have studios in London and Pakistan.
Iqbal claimed ARY One World will be an independent news channel and is determined to beam "true news" without external pressure.
"Our main thrust will be on live coverage, live interviews, and live interactive and current affairs programmes with an objective approach."
Iqbal said the current ARY Digital Channel shown in the UAE would be replaced by ARY Middle East focusing on family entertainment, targeting Asian communities living in this region.
"The idea behind launching the channel is not to have material gains, but the desire to accomplish something for the Pakistani nation and place it on the world map as progressive and development oriented.
"We want to provide a medium of entertainment for more than one billion people in Asia who are in search of a unique family entertainment channel."
They are working on new plans to prepare special programmes targeting community members in the UAE.
"The need to start the new television channels was felt because of the strong presence of channels that were bombarding us with alien culture contrary to our ideology. Their coverage tends to weaken our morals."
The main objective of ARY television is to entertain viewers, covering all aspects recreation, education, and sports, besides providing impartial news coverage of events from the world-over, especially relating to Asia and the Middle East.
The channel has also bought a franchise for the famous programme 'Who Wants to Be A Millionaire'. It has starting recording the programme from Pakistan entitled 'Kya Aap Banain Gae Crorepati' (Do You Want To Become A Millionaire). Famous Pakistani television artist Moin Akhtar will host the programme, which is set to air soon.
ARY Middle East will be a mixture of programmes shown on ARY India and Pakistan, and will incorporate programmes specifically prepared for the Asian communities in UAE and other countries in the Middle East.
Iqbal said it will be the only worldwide Urdu channel and will be viewed in 126 countries. "Currently, ours is the only channel which shows 11 hours of fresh content," he said.
Gulf News
