ANKARA
Turkey’s state-owned television channel TRT will start its closed circuit test broadcast of its English news service TRT World soon, it was announced Thursday.
In an interview with The Anadolu Agency, TRT’s Director-General Senol Goka gave his insights about the upcoming channel and revealed that the technical infrastructure for TRT World had been completed way back on January 15.
“We saw that technically we are ready. The next phase is about the content. A team of professionals is intensely working on that. The English-language channel will start its closed circuit test broadcast soon. After intense work on content and closed circuit test broadcast, the next phase will be open test broadcast. Our broadcast plan, which was prepared diligently, will be realized according to this road map,” Goka said.
He said that establishments such as TRT and The Anadolu Agency were becoming “soft powers,” and were becoming more influential globally day-by-day.
Deputy Director-General Ibrahim Eren said: “It will be a news station centered in Istanbul, but it will inform the world about the globe. There will be reporters from Asia, Americas and Europe. Reporters either settled (in those locations) or sent from the center will present continuous, strong, new, different, original and reliable news and human (interest) stories to the viewers.
“We examined the structures of other international news channels, but we haven’t copied any of these as a model. We have set a goal of being original for TRT World and our teams worked on this principle. Our studios in Kuala Lumpur, Washington and London are being set up right now. With professional reporters and technical teams that join us from tens of different countries, TRT World will have a structure that will be taken as a reference from all over the world.”
Currently, TRT has 15 television channels, including in Arabic, Kurdish and TRT Avaz, which mainly broadcasts to Turkic republics in former Soviet territory.
