EuroNews to Launch Georgian Franchise

“EuroNews” will launch its Georgian-language franchise, Michael Peters, Euronews CEO announced on July 25. Peters signed a Memorandum of Understanding with George Ramishvili, Chairman of Silknet, one of the two major corporate players on Georgian telecommunications market.

The channel will broadcast through Silknet’s TV-over-internet (IPTV) platform. According to the Press Release after the ceremony, it would be a franchise, partly translating the regular EuroNews programming and partly creating original content. EuroNews will recruit editor-in-chief and establish the editorial board that to “ensure strict impartiality”. The start of broadcasting is expecting next year, Silknet told Civil.ge.

EuroNews Georgia will be the third franchise project for the channel. Last week launch of EuroNews Serbia was announced, similar channel in Albania has been in operation since November 2018. EuroNews said the step serves “its strategic goal to become the first “glocal” media in the world”.

Silknet JSC is a subsidiary of Silk Road Group providing fixed and mobile telephony, internet and television services.

Euronews began broadcasting in 1993 in France. Nowadays, its team of 500 journalists offers 12 editions covering world news in Arabic, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. In 2016, Euronews group launched its sister channel, the first pan-African multilingual and independent news outlet, Africanews.

EuroNews was launched by ten European national broadcasters in 1993, but more national broadcasters – including from Russia, Ukraine, Morocco and Algeria, have been added since, forming what is known as “SOCEMIE Consortium” responsible for editorial practices.

Currently, the major financial stakes in EuroNews are held by Media Globe Networks, owned by Egyptian telecom magnate Naguib Sawiris and by US-based NBC Universal, parent company of NBC News. The editorial control, however is still exercised by SOCEMIE, which seven members on the editorial board, as opposed to Sawaris’s three and NBC’s one.

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