The Arabian Radio Network is launching a new Farsi language radio station in September.
The new station will, it is understood, offer music and talk radio programming in Farsi to a regional audience. It is believed that the Dubai Media City-based broadcaster plans to launch the radio station on or around the 18 September. The new station will be called Radio Shoma and, as well as the traditional airwaves broadcast, the new entity will also be streamed online.
The addition of a new station takes ARN’s current broadcast offering up to eight, including Dubai 92, Hit 96.7 and Al Khaleejia. Its stations already cater to Hindi, Malayalam, Arabic and English-speaking listeners, and the new station will bring a new audience dynamic of Persian speakers.
ARN is headquartered in Dubai and is part of the UAE’s government-owned Arab Media Group. ARN and events agency Done are all that’s left of the group following the decamping of its other media channels, including newspaper Al Bayan, to Dubai Media Inc in late 2009 as part of a major restructuring of the emirate’s government-owned media.