News

News Corporation plans to launch two Farsi-language satellite TV stations through a Dubai-based joint venture with a regional media firm.

Rupert Murdoch's media empire already has an interest in the Farsi1 television station, and will launch two additional channels targeting the Iranian market in the next few months.

The two new channels will be operated by Broadcast Middle East (BME), a joint venture between News Corporation and Moby Group, a media company with operations in Dubai and Afghanistan.

BME launched the Farsi1 channel in 2009, and plans to launch a second Farsi-language channel called 'Zemzemeh' - which means 'whisper' in English - in July.

"We've got the launch of Zemzemeh, which is our new channel. That's happening on the 9th of July," said Zaid Mohseni, the chief executive of BME. "The second channel is going to be a little more female-skewed than the first channel."