The globe-spanning channel, called TVP World, had originally been due to start from the new year, but with the migrant crisis heating up, TVP CEO Jacek Kurski decided to bring the launch forward, the wirtualnemedia.pl website reported.
"We must counteract disinformation," Kurski said as TVP's flagship news show Wiadomości reported that Belarus and Russia were waging "information warfare" and using the children of migrants for propaganda purposes.
The broadcaster's deputy CEO Mateusz Matyszkowicz told the state PAP news agency that Poland would now respond with its own information: "credible, professional, well-crafted, with fantastic anchors, excellent journalists and a beautiful layout."
Besides news programmes and round-the-clock coverage of the border crisis, TVP World is set to feature panel shows, cultural content and conversations with experts, all prepared by a team of native English-speaking staff and Polish journalists with years of experience in international media, executives said.
Viewers will be able to tune in to TVP World via its website, satellite TV, as well as through the Polish-language TVP Info news channel, which is set to carry English-language content between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. Warsaw time, for audiences in different time zones, such as the United States.
TVP World's annual budget is expected to rise from PLN 22.6 million (EUR 4.9 million) in 2022 to PLN 30 million (EUR 6.4 million) in 2024, according to wirtualnemedia.pl.
"In the coming months and years, the eyes of the world will be on our region, so let us seize the opportunity to report on what is going on in our own way," TVP's Matyszkowicz said, as quoted by wirtualnemedia.pl.
(pm/gs)
Source: TVP Info, PAP, wirtualnemedia.pl