Quest Arabiya gives local content a new channel

Regional audiences can expect a schedule full of fresh, local content when Quest Arabiya launches this year.

The 24/7, free-to-air Arabic channel will broadcast content with a special focus on adventure and survival, motoring, engineering, wildlife, history, people and places, science, crime and magic.

The man behind the project, channel manager Carl von Doussa, has more than 20 years of experience in the television industry. It includes a project in the United Kingdom to repurpose BBC Worldwide’s vast archives as a number of subscription cable channels, and six years as chief operating officer of broadcasting at Abu Dhabi Media (The National’s parent company). Von Doussa has been with Image Nation since last year, working on the Quest Arabiya project.

The channel is a partnership between Image Nation and Discovery Networks International, the world’s leading pay-TV broadcaster. Quest will join Discovery’s portfolio of channels in the region, including the free-to-air food channel Fatafeat and subscription channels such as Discovery and TLC, which are available regionally through OSN.

Von Doussa says of his latest project: “It’s been a fantastic journey since the middle of last year. The seed of the idea was ‘how does Abu Dhabi produce a greater volume of its own content to celebrate the achievements, culture and heritage, not just of Abu Dhabi itself, but the whole region, how the region has got to where it is today and what the future and economic development looks like.”

Original article by Chris Newbould

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Quest Arabiya gives local content a new channel