Al-Jazeera English coming to Freeview

Qatar-based news channel Al-Jazeera English (AJE) has confirmed plans to launch on the Freeview platform, which will double its UK audience.

From tomorrow, AJE will become available on the digital terrestrial television service, which is on the main TV set of over 10 million homes in the UK.

The channel is already available to around 10m British households on Sky and Freesat, where it launched in 2006 and 2008 respectively.

Following the Freeview launch, Al-Jazeera's English news channel will be able to reach around 80% of the UK population.

AJE will broadcast a mix of live news and sport daily from 6pm to 11pm on Freeview channel 89 from its studios in Doha, Washington DC and London.

The schedule will also include current affairs programmes The Rageh Omaar Report and Frost Over the World, which is hosted by Sir David Frost.

In a statement, Al-Jazeera Network director media development Al Anstey said: "This is a breakthrough for us, it will give us substantial reach to more than 80% of homes in the UK.

"At three-and-a-half years old we are steadily gaining the reputation and trust and loyalty of our viewers. We offer distinctive content and there is a real appetite for high quality news.

"The pain of the economy means the industry is less able to go out and do the job of covering news, this launch on Freeview shows our commitment."

The launch of AJE follows Sky's decision to pull its Sky Sports News channel from Freeview to be replaced by a timeshift of Sky3.