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RIYADH, 13 April 2006 — Saudi Television will go digital beginning June under a contract awarded by the Ministry of Culture and Information to a French firm.
Addressing a press conference here Tuesday night, Minister of Culture and Information Iyad Madani said the contract, won by Stesa, the local subsidiary of the French company Thales, would enable Saudi TV to telecast high resolution images on both its Arabic and English channels.
Senior officials from the ministry, executives of Thales, the prime contractor for the project, were present The cost and duration of the project were not revealed.
The minister announced that the project includes the supply of the state-of-the-art broadcasting and transmission equipment for 22 stations in major Saudi cities as well as a network supervision system to monitor the status of the entire transmission chain from the control room in Riyadh.
"We have to complete the network coverage of all Saudi regions targeting 22 cities in the first stage," he said.
Madani said the government wants the private sector to set up radio stations and make them accessible to the public. The authorities in the remote regions of the Kingdom should take the initiative and share ownership with the private sector, he added.
He said the ministry has received 20 applications for the grant of licenses for opening new radio stations. "We shall review these applications after the system of granting licenses, now under way, gets completed. We want to ensure that there is a sound basis for channeling investment in the audiovisual communications sector through a well-defined regulatory infrastructure."
The minister said the Kingdom would review the structure of TV and radio stations, including all the regulatory and technical aspects. He criticized the open, unrestricted Arab satellite channels and the programs they were putting out. They offend public morals, he said, adding that there was a need for a regulatory framework for licensing satellite channels.
In reply to a question on the conversion of the Saudi Press Agency into a news corporation, the minister said the government would not act in a hurry since all the related aspects would have to be looked into.
Speaking on behalf of Thales Security Systems, Pierre Maciejowski, managing director, said: "We're delighted that our local technical teams are contributing to the rollout of ultra-modern broadcasting technologies in Saudi Arabia."
Thales, he pointed out, landed the contract under a competitive bidding procedure launched in November last year.
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