Al Jazeera will launch a new channel, Al Jazeera Documentary, on 1 January, 2007. For the past two years they have run a documentary film festival, the third is coming up this April. Entries can be in either Arabic or English.

Al Jazeera already runs stand alone programme strands on both their Arabic and English news channels, but this channel will be all Arabic.

Whether AJD is just a chance to leverage content, or if it will have a commissioning budget, isn’t clear. I suspect a bit of both. But the press release didn’t talk about a major editorial appointment to go along with the launch.

It’ll be interesting to see exactly who picks it up.