Spacetoon Arabic
Canali-TV
Spacetoon (Arabic: سبيستون or سبيس تون) is a pan-Arab free-to-air television channel that specializes in animation and children programs. It began broadcasting on 15 March 2000 in Damascus,[5] and it is currently headquartered in Dubai.[6] The channel targets children from 4 and up. Its late night block Space Power is targeted at teenagers and young adults. The Spacetoon company also maintains a video-on-demand app called Spacetoon Go. It is informally referred to as Stoon.
The Spacetoon company has had two now-defunct channels in the Arab world, Space Power TV and Spacetoon English.
The main Indonesian channel began airing on 24 March 2005 in Jakarta.[7] It later became NET., and its broadcast remains on satellite television. Currently, there are three Spacetoon channels in Indonesia: Spacetoon, Space Shopping and Spacetoon Plus. In India, Spacetoon India exists as licensing company, but not as a separate TV channel. In South Korea, Spacetoon launched in 2005 but has since closed down.[8] A Turkish feed is scheduled to release soon.[9]
Spacetoon is currently broadcast in 22 countries, and has an audience of over 130 million viewers.[10]
History
Arab world
In 1999, Bahrain Radio and Television Corporation officially signed an agreement to broadcast a children's cartoon channel. On 15 March 2000, Spacetoon began trial broadcasting as a seven-hour block on Bahrain TV.[6] It continued to air this way until the contract ended on 12 January 2002, according to a statement issued by the Ministry. Later, in 2004, Spacetoon moved its headquarters to Dubai and was established as an independent television channel on Nilesat.[6][11]
In the Arab world, the majority of programs are dubbed in modern standard Arabic. Spacetoon is very closely affiliated with Venus Center, a Syrian dubbing company which has historically provided the Arabic dubbed versions of the programming, and whose voice actors usually were the announcers for the shows between the years 2001-2015. Using modern standard Arabic in dubbing played a crucial role in maintaining the use of the dialect in childhood, which was especially significant given the context of emerging spoken Arabic dialects.[11]
