Saturday, July 16, 2011

Al Jazeera Balkans 'On Air in Autumn'

Station to broadcast 24 hours a day from Sarajevo, Zagreb and Belgrade using state-of-art equipment costing $10 million.

Senka Kurt
Sarajevo

Al Jazeera Balkans could start broadcasting as soon as November, the director for programming, Goran Milic, has confirmed.

Work on completing the central studio in Sarajevo for Al Jazeera, nicknamed "the Arab CNN", is still in progress.

A team of journalists, producers and TV workers from many parts of former Yugoslavia has been preparing a promotional TV programme for months.

A 15-minutes promotional show presenting journalists who will work for Al Jazeera Balkans has been already shown to selected viewers.

A TV show covering a story on ex-Yugoslav cities will be soon broadcast, reminding people what Skopje, Belgrade, Zagreb and Nis look like today, Milic said.

"A large part of the team of journalists has already been completed," he added.

The Balkan branch of Al Jazeera will have studios in Zagreb and Belgrade alongside bureaux in Istanbul, Podgorica, Skopje and Pristina.

Reporting will be done in a language that is mutually understood in the countries of the old Serbo-Croat linguistic area: Bosnia and Herzegovina; Croatia; Serbia; and Montenegro.

The station's codes and rules for journalism are strictly defined. "Personal views do not and will not have anything to do with the programmes. There will be no conclusions or comments," Milic said.

Al Jazeera Balkans general manager, Tarik Djodjic, said programmes will be broadcast 24 hours daily in HD format. The most modern production and broadcasting technologies will be used. The equipment purchased had cost about $10 million, he said.

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