ALGERIA / The state wants to speed up its project for private channels

Abdelmajid Tebboune, Algeria’s new prime minister, announced on June 23rd that the question of private television channels would be “closed once and for all before the end of the year.”

At a plenary session in which the elected members of the Assemblée Populaire Nationale (the Algerian lower house of parliament) discussed the government’s action plan, Abdelmajid Tebboune said that private Algerian channels would be regulated by the end of the year, “at the same time as the launch of the project for a parliamentary television channel.”

Private television stations will be given authorisation “according to a more precise specification, as Algerian channels broadcasting from within Algeria and not from abroad.”

The head of government also announced the creation of a Press Council for Standards and Ethics, which will work hand in hand with the Algerian broadcasting watchdog ARAV (Autorité de Régulation de l’Audiovisuel).

Since the 2012 Law deregulating broadcasting, the Algerian government has officially authorized only five private channels: Dzaïr TV, El Djazairia One, Ennahar TV, Echorouk TV, and Hogar TV.

But the country also has some 50 unauthorised private channels broadcasting from abroad. Algerian, but bound by foreign law, they have an Algerian editorial staff but transmit mainly from Jordan, Lebanon, the United Kingdom or the Gulf States.

Sources: L’Expression, Le Temps d’Algérie, Maghreb Emergent, Jeune Afrique