BBC Arabic TV shapes up with new appointments
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 The BBC World Service has signed up a former editor of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya as news editor for its upcoming Arab television news service set to be launched in 2007. Salah Negm, who is currently general manager of Middle East News (MEN), the news-gathering arm of MBC, has worked previously with the BBC as program editor of the short-lived Arabic news channel it launched from 1994 to 1996.
“I'm very excited about re-joining the BBC to help launch and run its Arabic TV service," said Negm, who helped kick off Al Jazeera’s news department in 1996.
The free-to-air channel, with a $35 million budget, will initially broadcast to the Middle East for 12 hours a day from its bureaus in London and Cairo. It will be the first publicly funded international television service launched by the BBC World Service, and the second in the region after the US funded Al Hurra.
The BBC World Service pulled the plug on its previous Arabic language TV station in 1996 over “major editorial disagreements” with its Saudi funding source Orbit Telecommunications.
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