Al Jazeera Balkans, a new channel by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera, will launch on Friday, November 11th 2011 at 6pm. It will be based in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), with regional offices in Zagreb (Croatia), Belgrade (Serbia) and Skopje (Macedonia).

The channel will broadcast news and current affairs programming to audiences across the Balkans region in the regional language and employ about 150 highly skilled journalists and technical staff trained in London and Doha.

Al Jazeera Balkans will be available on major cable services as well as satellite across the Balkans region. Continuing in the tradition of Al Jazeera's groundbreaking journalism, the channel will provide audiences in the Balkans with a key source of independent international and regional news.

In addition to its regionally focused news, Al Jazeera Balkans will draw from the existing resources of Al Jazeera's news services as well as from the network's extensive international news-gathering operations from over 70 bureaus across the world.

Al Jazeera has invested more than USD 20million in the Al Jazeera Balkans project. The channel will have correspondents in all countries of the former Yugoslavia, and in major world capitals. It aims to reach an audience of over 20 million people in the countries in the region, as well as diaspora from these countries, particularly in Western Europe.

Al Jazeera started out more than 14 years ago as the first independent Arabic news channel in the world dedicated to providing comprehensive television news and live debate for the Arab world.

Today, Al Jazeera Network is an international media corporation and it consists of the flagship Al Jazeera Arabic channel, Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera Documentary, Al Jazeera Sport, Al Jazeera.net (the English and Arabic web sites), the Al Jazeera Media Training and Development Center, the Al Jazeera Center for Studies, Al Jazeera Mubasher (Live), and Al Jazeera Mobile.

Watch the Al Jazeera Balkans promotional movie