The audiovisual authority of France is to launch a Spanish version of the international channel France24 to bring French news to Spanish and Latin American audiences, according to the newspaper Les Echos.
AEF, the French external audiovisual media group, which supervises and coordinates the activities of French TV channels abroad, has asked the Government to include the Spanish channel in its goals and resources plan.
According to Les Echos, the Minister of Foreign Affairs shares AEF's opinion that the channel should be available to Spanish audiences as Spanish is now the third most spoken language in the world.
However, France24's budget isn't what it was, so the project may be put on hold for a while. The channel will probably start by broadcasting for only two or three hours a day in Spanish, instead of launching a complete Spanish language channel immediately. According to Les Echos, this will be the case until 2015, when the channel will most likely be fully launched.
France24 already has a French, English and Arabic version. The channel's worldwide audience is 45 million and is particularly successful among the Maghreb countries.
