Rapid TV News

Jazeera adds 5m homes

Chris Forrester ©RapidTVNews | 15-07-2008

Al Jazeera English has added 5m potential new viewing homes in Poland, but not on TV. AJE has been added to Onet.pl, described as Poland’s biggest online portal, and will be the service’s first live streamed international news channel. 

Al Jazeera English can now be viewed by a claimed 120m homes. Poland’s Onet.pl hosts 200 detailed thematic services and in April 2008 it was visited by 9.8 million unique users, which made it Poland’s most popular online portal with almost 4 billion page views a month. The portal hosts numerous multimedia materials e.g. video clips, selected TV series and programmes by TVN, plus coverage of all Champions’ League football matches.

Phil Lawrie, Director of Global Distribution for the Al Jazeera Network said: “This is a very significant deal for us in Poland and we are excited to be the first streamed live international news channel on the Onet.pl platform. Al Jazeera is constantly looking at new and interesting ways to distribute our content and Onet.pl certainly fits those criteria. The last few months have seen aggressive growth in the distribution of Al Jazeera’s channels and content across multiple markets. Al Jazeera English has just celebrated its first year on YouTube having become firmly established as the most popular news channel on the site, generating more than 21 million video views in the first 12 months since the channel’s introduction on the site. With the launch of AJE on Onet.pl we are continuing to demonstrate our commitment to reaching an ever-wider number of viewers across the globe - via all forms of distribution technology.”

Al Jazeera English can already be seen across three million households in Poland on Cyfra Plus, Cyfrowy Polsat - Channel 95, INEA Cable, TK Poznan and Toya (Lodz).