Sky News Arabia has ‘highest viewership rating of UAE news channels’

Nart Bouran, head of Sky News Arabia

ABU DHABI: Sky News Arabia says it has achieved the highest UAE viewership rating of all news stations broadcast from the country, citing research data.
The 24-hour news channel, a joint venture between Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corporation (ADMIC) and the UK-based Sky, said it achieved a 14.2 percent rating in the UAE, based on figures from media monitor Ipsos.
The Abu Dhabi-based Sky News Arabia, which launched in 2012, competes with the more established Al Arabiya News Channel in the UAE.
“We are chipping away at our competitors in all markets,” Nart Bouran, head of Sky News Arabia, told Arab News.
The media executive said the channel’s viewership has been growing “exponentially.”
“It was always part of our strategy to overtake some of our competitors, our main competitors, in some markets, and the UAE was one of them... We have overtaken both our main competitors in Egypt, from the pan-Arab channels.”
Sky News Arabia also competes with Al Jazeera, the news channel broadcast from Qatar.
Bouran attributed the growth in television viewership to the channel’s coverage of topics such as the war in Yemen and the US election. “We hit the big stories big,” he said.
The Ipsos research reportedly revealed that Sky News Arabia had the strongest viewership growth rate of all Arab news channels in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt and Jordan. It doubled its audience in many of these key markets, according to a statement carried by the UAE news agency WAM.
Bouran pointed to high engagement levels on the channel’s social-media channels.
Its Facebook engagement rate of 20 percent is significantly higher than that of its competitors, as is its Twitter influence rating of 85 percent, based on “Klout” ratings, according to the WAM statement.
Sky News Arabia has a network of more than 500 journalists, and 30 offices in the Middle East and North Africa, in addition to its offices in London and Washington.