Rapid TV News reports that Turkey’s TRT started its all-Arabic service last week on April 5th. TRT Director-General Ibrahim Sahin said that TRT's new channel "would enable Turkey and Arab countries to know each other directly and better". The TV channel would reach 350 million people throughout the Arab world through 3 satellites.

The channel has as its symbol a cup of ‘Turkish’ coffee, a common delight for both Turks and Arabs.

"The TRT Arabic will be on air for 24 hours a day. We will broadcast a range of programmes from politics to sports, from movies to TV series. Istanbul-based channel will also broadcast live from Cairo, Beirut, Damascus and Ankara," he added.

Turkey’s prime minister Recep Erdogan, said: “Perhaps, mines had been planted in the past and walls had been erected between our countries. Today, we have the will to say that no one will be able to plant the seeds of division between us.” Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Aranç said that Turkish and Arabic people are like “fingers on one hand.”

TRT’s Arabic channel is being carried on Noorsat, at the Arabsat location of 25.5 deg East, and from the Nilesat location at 7 deg West.

Rapid TVNews reports that the pay-TV merger between Showtime Arabia and rival Orbit was concluded on time at the end of last month, according to reports out of Kuwait on Aug 11. A statement from Kuwait-based Kipco said the agreement was formally wrapped on July 31.The deal was announced last month, although no official valuation was given other than a very vague statement that the merger was worth “billions”. Neither was any information given as to who initiated the “merger”, although it is widely spoken of as a Showtime Arabia initiative. Showtime Arabia had reportedly bought out its Viacom minority partner in its Gulf-DTH operation. Kipco, an investment vehicle ultimately controlled by the Kuwait royal family, already controlled 75.3% of Gulf-DTH.

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Rapid TVNews reports that there are four satellite operators dominating Middle East and North African broadcasting: Arabsat, Nilesat, Eutelsat and Noorsat. However, these four players occupy just two dominant orbital positions, Arabsat’s 25.5 deg East, and Nilesat’s at 7 deg West.

Eutelsat has co-located satellites at both positions and where it leases capacity to Noorsat. Now Noorsat’s CEO says there’s no space for another operator to enter this market.

“No other player can easily get into the DTH TV market,” said Omar Shoter, Noorsat’s CEO. “It takes between 40-60 million homes to be pointed at your new satellite, in order to be profitable.” Shoter was speaking to Digital Production Middle East.

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RapidTVNews reports that Hamas-backed Al-Aqsa TV has been “banned” by French broadcasting authorities just hours after transmissions started from Eutelsat-associated operator Noorsat. Noorsat uses capacity leased from Eutelsat. Palestinian group Hamas's television channel was taken off the air in Europe less than 24 hours after it was added to the satellite network.

The decision to ban the channel was praised by the American Jewish Committee, which in a statement said “the action will sharply limit the reach into Europe of the terrorist organization's broadcasts.”

Al-Aqsa was being carried by Eutelsat on its Eurobird 2, Eurobird 9 and Atlantic Bird 4 satellites covering the whole of Europe and the Mediterranean basin. It had only gone on air on Jan 7 when the signal was “hastily interrupted” following a decision from France’s CSA regulator.

According to BBC Monitoring, the CSA said it had sent a warning to Eutelsat in December in the belief that some Al-Aqsa TV programmes were likely to breach of Article 5 of the law prohibiting incitement to hatred or violence on the grounds of race, religion or nationality.

Once it received the CSA warning, Eutelsat says it sent a message to Noorsat, the company that distributes Al-Aqsa, asking it "to respect all international and national laws regarding channel content".

Eutelsat stressed to AFP that there was no contract between Eutelsat and Al-Aqsa TV. "We have a contract with a distributing firm called Noorsat based in Bahrain. We learnt that Al-Aqsa TV was being carried on one of our satellites broadcasting to Europe on capacity that had been temporarily allocated to Noorsat for technical documentation at the start of the week," Eutelsat explained.

In a statement published on Friday, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said that it had sent a letter to CSA President Michel Boyan, voicing its concern about Al-Aqsa TV's announcement that it was going to broadcast to Europe. "The natural audience for Al-Aqsa TV programmes will be young Arab speakers in Europe and the West who will thereby be exposed to calls from jihadis to attack their Jewish neighbours and reject the European values of secularism, multiculturalism and tolerance," the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said.

However, other critics say that Israeli TV frequently carries anti-Islamic comments of an extreme nature. One Mid-East report (carried on Middle East Online) said pro-Israeli groups, which are influential in Europe, often exaggerate or even outright lie about the nature of Hamas discourse. Recently, commenting on the war on Gaza, former Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu said that all civilians living in Gaza are collectively guilty for Kassam rockets, and thus deserve their punishment, reported Middle East Online.

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