SAT-7 to Extend Services to Arabic Christians in Australia
UBI World TV, an Australian based satellite TV service provider, is adding SAT-7 to its bouquet of Arabic TV stations.
A Middle Eastern Christian satellite television channel will soon be available to Arabic and Farsi speaking audiences in Australia and New Zealand. While the 2001 Australian census reported that over 210,000 Arabs have moved to the Pacific nation in recent years, other sources say the actual number of Arabic speakers in Australia may be as high as one million people.
“This is exciting for Arabs and Iranians living in and near Australia. They often feel culturally and religiously ‘off the map’ because they are so far away from the Middle East,” said Terence Ascott, CEO of SAT-7, an Arabic television service for the Christians of the Middle East and North Africa. “A number of Egyptian Christians in Australia have contacted us in the past hoping to receive SAT-7, but the extra satellite expenses were too great for us. Now we have a wonderful opportunity to broadcast in a part of the world that otherwise we could not afford to reach.”
UBI World TV, an Australian based satellite TV service provider, is adding SAT-7 to its bouquet of Arabic TV stations. UBI currently carries 16 Arabic channels. SAT-7 is the first Arabic Christian channel offered to UBI subscribers.
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“To have such a Christian Arabic channel available in this corner of the world is a thrill. I’ll make it known to all my Arab Christian contacts,” says Rev. Dr. David Claydon, a resident of Sydney and former International Director for the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization.
“Most of the Arabic channels we see here do not include any Christian programs, so it will be great to have one that is distinctly Christian in nature,” says one Australian Coptic Orthodox church member contacted by the station.
According to SAT-7, the UBI opportunity marks the first time the channel will be visible at broadcast quality outside its normal viewing area of the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.
UBI hopes to have SAT-7 available by Feb. 7, 2005, just in time for the St. Maroon Feast Day celebrated by many Lebanese Australian Christians.
For more information on how to receive SAT-7 in Australia and New Zealand through UBI World TV’s subscription service, go to www.UBIworldtv.com
