The Channel | 2004 | September

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EuroNews was conceived back in 1990-91
during the Gulf War when the absence of a
dedicated European news channel became
evident. The vision that the founders of
EuroNews had was to provide European
viewers with a news channel that could
tackle news on the scale of their continent
and could deal with international current
affairs from a European perspective.
EuroNews went on air on 1 January 1993.
Today, EuroNews is achieving the objectives
set by the channel’s founders; ten years after
its launch, during the Iraq war, EuroNews
proved its popularity with European viewers
and firmly established itself as a leader
amongst international news channels. The
channel’s European positioning offers a
genuine alternative to the news services
provided by Anglo-Saxon and national
channels. Audience data released by various
research institutes in Europe proves we have
succeeded in attracting new viewers and
doubling our audience at the outset of the war
in Iraq on 20 March 2003. During the first
week of the conflict, 3.5 times more German
viewers watched EuroNews, daily audience
figures also tripled in Poland, and doubled in
Spain, Switzerland and in the Moscow area.
Over the years we have also offered our viewers
comprehensive coverage of European
reinforce our coverage of current international
and EU affairs, in January we opened a
EuroNews’ correspondent bureau in Brussels
and launched new programmes. Each week,
EuroNews runs face-to-face interviews with
leading figures in the news – from international
politics, European affairs, economics, arts and
culture. Each month, our head-to-head debate
“Agora” pits two personalities with differing
points of view against each other. EuroNews
gives priority to topical themes currently being
debated in European society, in order to help
its citizens understand what’s at stake and how
they may take part themselves in the decision-
making process. In cooperation with the
European Space Agency we also offer a
fortnightly programme which covers all space-
related activities: science, industrial
applications, earth observation, launches and
manned flights.
On the occasion of European Union
enlargement, EuroNews provided
programmes which ran throughout the
weekend to cover this extraordinary event.
EuroNews also covered the European
elections throughout the 25 countries, and
from 10 to 13 June the channel was a truly
European channel providing information on
the election results all over the Union.
EuroNews is set apart from other news
channels: by virtue of its treatment of
international news from a European
perspective, and thanks to its unique number
of language versions. EuroNews launched in
five languages, and this multilingual
approach – so innovative in 1993 – has
proved key to the growing success. Europe
accounts for 34 official languages and 200
dialects; 27% of upmarket Europeans don’t
speak any foreign language and only 44%
use English for business. EuroNews
broadcasts 24 hours a day simultaneously in
seven languages: English, French, German,
Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
EuroNews still produces more language
versions simultaneously than any other news
channel. Launching new language versions
is an important part of my development
strategy for the channel. I hope to offer in
the near future new languages from Central
and Eastern Europe.
EuroNews has also achieved its goal to
become Europe’s leading international news
channel in terms of distribution and audience.
Today 142 million homes receive EuroNews
– more than seven million viewers watch the
channel daily via cable, satellite and
terrestrial networks. According to European
peoplemeter results of the major audience
research companies such as AGF/Gfk in
Germany, Médiamétrie in France, Sofres AM
in Spain, AGB in Poland, EuroNews is the
news channel appreciated most by the general
public. In the upmarket sector, according to
the latest EMS survey (which measures
audience in the top 20% of households by
income in 16 European countries), EuroNews
is the leading news channel in 5 major
European markets (UK, France, Spain,
Germany, Italy).
Apart from being carried on cable, satellite
and terrestrial networks, we also develop
new ways of distribution on personal digital
assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and
ADSL. EuroNews has over the past few
years developed multilingual news services
for PDAs thus becoming a news supplier for
the new generation of Palm Pilot devices and
for AvantGo subscribers. EuroNews is also
available on mobile phones – on Mobilkom
in Austria and on Orange in Switzerland.
Since last December EuroNews is
distributed via ADSL thanks to the two first
French operators Free and TPSL.
Our multilingual website is developing
rapidly; topics broadcast on EuroNews are
available as videos as well as scripts in seven
linguistic versions produced by multilingual
journalists. Every month, Net surfers from
all over the globe access 6 million pages.
TheNEWSCHANNEL for all EUROPEANS
Philippe Cayla
Chairman & Chief Executive, EuroNews
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