About AnewZ

AnewZ

AnewZ is an English-language international news television channel broadcasting around the clock from Baku, Azerbaijan. It was launched on 4 November 2024, days before the COP29 United Nations climate conference opened in the Azerbaijani capital, with the slogan of a global media voice from Baku to the world, and it was immediately announced as a broadcast media partner of COP29. The channel's name is explained by its operators as news from A to Z. AnewZ broadcasts only in English, with presenters drawn from different countries, correspondents and contributors reported in more than twelve countries, and distribution claimed in over 110 countries. Its executive director is Rufat Hamzayev, formerly a deputy chairman of the state channel AzTV between 2020 and 2024. AnewZ is significant less for its age, it is one of the newest national channels in the South Caucasus, than for what it represents: Azerbaijan's first attempt to build a purpose-designed, English-language, international news broadcaster in the mould of the global news channels, rather than adapting a domestic service for foreign audiences.

Why Azerbaijan built an English-language news channel

Before AnewZ, Azerbaijan's television address to the world was led by CBC TV, the SOCAR-owned channel broadcasting mainly in Russian with programming in other languages, whose mission was to promote Azerbaijan internationally. Russian, however, reaches a shrinking post-Soviet audience, and Azerbaijan's recent diplomacy, centred on energy exports to Europe, the COP29 climate conference in November 2024 and an assertive post-2020 foreign policy after the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, required an English-language voice. Reporting on the channel's launch recorded one of its stated aims as the development of English-language reporting in Azerbaijan, with a focus region of the South Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East and collaboration with media experts from the United Kingdom, the United States and Spain. AnewZ was therefore conceived as outward-facing state-adjacent media: a channel whose audience is not in Baku but in the capitals, newsrooms and conference halls where Azerbaijan's image is contested. That purpose explains its launch timing, its staffing model and its technology, each of which is documented below, as well as the scrutiny its undisclosed financing attracted from independent Azerbaijani journalists.

The licence and the founding company

AnewZ's legal foundation was established through Azerbaijan's licensing system in the autumn of 2024. Under Azerbaijani law a satellite broadcaster requires a licence from the Audiovisual Council, and the council's competition decision of October 2024, investigated and reported by the independent outlet Mikroskop Media, declared CIBC Global Limited Liability Company, with the editorial name AnewZ, the winner of the satellite broadcasting competition, citing the company's superior technical capabilities and economic justification, and set a licence fee of 2,500 manats. Registry data from the State Tax Service reported in the same investigation showed that CIBC LLC had been established on 11 June 2024, that its legal representative was Rufat Hamzayev, and that its authorised capital had grown from five million manats at establishment to eleven million manats within four months. The channel is thus operated by CIBC Global, a company created specifically in 2024, a matter of public registry record. What has not been officially disclosed, as the investigation emphasised, is the channel's ultimate owner and source of finance, a question examined in a later section of this profile.

Building a broadcast centre in four months

The physical creation of AnewZ is unusually well documented because its systems integrator, the European group Broadcast Solutions, published a detailed account of the project. Consultants for CIBC Global first approached Broadcast Solutions at the CABSAT exhibition in Dubai in late May 2024 with an immovable deadline: the opening of COP29 on 11 November 2024. At that moment, by the integrator's own account, CIBC Global had no building ready, no staff, no editorial policies and no technology in place. Working from its Dubai facility, Broadcast Solutions took on the whole delivery, supervising civil works and interior fit-out as well as supplying and integrating the broadcast systems and training staff to operate them. The completed centre was built around the nxtedition integrated production environment, giving journalists and producers editorial control and automating the channel's studios. That a functioning 24-hour international news channel, with studios, newsroom systems and trained operators, was delivered from a standing start in roughly four months is the central verified production fact about AnewZ, and it indicates the scale of resources committed to meeting the COP29 deadline.

Studios and production technology

The AnewZ broadcast centre in Baku contains three studio facilities whose design has been described in trade press coverage by Broadcast Solutions and specialist publications. The first is a main news studio for anchors and up to four guests; the second is a stand-up studio for reporters and weather presenters; and the third is a broadcast position in the heart of the newsroom itself, allowing live presentation from among the journalists. The nxtedition platform automates studio operation and provides the editorial system for the whole newsroom, and the installation integrates Ross production switchers, Tascam audio mixers, Canon PTZ cameras and studio lighting, with operational teams able to control the three studios from one central production room. Journalists can also repackage stories for social media within the same platform, reflecting the channel's need to distribute English-language clips beyond its linear feed. Trade coverage quoted executive director Rufat Hamzayev describing the challenge given to the integrator as building a complete channel from scratch against an absolutely fixed deadline, and praising the result as reliable, intuitive and running on standard computers for ease of support. The centre also became the new home of CBC Sport, as described below.

Launch for COP29 in November 2024

AnewZ started broadcasting on 4 November 2024, one week before COP29 opened in Baku on 11 November, and on 11 November it was announced as a media and broadcast partner of the conference, alongside CBC TV as the other Azerbaijani broadcast partner. The channel organised a media tour of its newsroom for local outlets at launch, and most Azerbaijani news websites and television channels reported its arrival. Its launch slogan presented it as a global media voice from Baku to the world. Executive director Rufat Hamzayev, quoted in the COP29 partnership announcements, said the channel was proud to amplify voices and initiatives focused on combating climate change and to showcase the efforts of leaders, innovators and communities working toward a sustainable future. The COP29 partnership gave the newborn channel instant accreditation-level access to the largest international event Azerbaijan has hosted, with thousands of foreign delegates and journalists in Baku, and its early output was correspondingly heavy with climate and conference coverage. The launch fulfilled the project's founding deadline exactly, which is why the channel's birthday and the conference are inseparable in its history.

People: leadership and presenters

AnewZ's leadership combines Azerbaijani broadcasting management with imported international newsroom experience. Executive director Rufat Hamzayev served as a deputy chairman of AzTV, the state broadcaster, from 2020 to 2024 before moving to the new channel, and he is also the legal representative of the founding company CIBC Global. Independent reporting on the launch identified Guy Shone as editor-in-chief, a journalist specialising in economics who had previously headed the Euronews office in Qatar and who hosts the channel's business programme, and Nadiya Dermanska as deputy editor-in-chief, with a background in Ukrainian media, Euronews and Brussels-based reporting. Presenters identified at launch included Orkhan Amashov, hosting a programme on dialogue between civilisations, and Anastasiya Lavrina, presenter of a politics programme, alongside presenters from different countries in line with the channel's international presentation style. The channel reported employees or correspondents in twelve countries at launch. Staffing details beyond these launch-period reports are not extensively documented in public sources, and this profile does not extend the list by speculation; the verified picture is of a Baku newsroom deliberately mixing Azerbaijani management with journalists recruited from international English-language news.

Distribution in more than 110 countries

From launch, AnewZ has presented its distribution as global: broadcasting 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from Baku, with 24/7 outputs to local and international broadcast feeds and availability in more than 110 countries, figures stated by the channel, repeated by its technology partners and recorded in the batch data underlying this profile. Its licence is for satellite broadcasting, and its output is also distributed online through its website, anewz.tv, which publishes its English-language news, programmes and COP29 and COP30 coverage to a web audience. The channel's focus regions are the South Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East, and its site organises coverage by world regions in the manner of established international news channels. Two cautions are appropriate for directory readers. First, the 110-country figure is the channel's own distribution claim, not an independently audited carriage measurement, and availability on a satellite footprint or a streaming platform is not the same as habitual viewing. Second, no audience measurement for AnewZ is published in the sources consulted. Its verified significance lies in the existence and technical completeness of the service, not in any proven audience size.

Ownership questions and independent scrutiny

AnewZ's ownership has been the subject of documented investigative scrutiny, and a balanced profile must record it accurately. Mikroskop Media, an independent Azerbaijani outlet, investigated the channel in November 2024 under a headline describing it as a new propaganda machine of the Azerbaijani government, reporting that the channel's owner and financial source had not been disclosed despite a reported cost of around six million dollars, a figure matching the growth of CIBC Global's registered capital to eleven million manats, roughly six point four million dollars at the time. The investigation noted that CIBC LLC was registered at the same address as a structural unit of SOCAR, the state oil company, and two SOCAR-established companies, and that SOCAR already owned Khazar TV, CBC and CBC Sport, while emphasising that SOCAR ownership of AnewZ had not been officially disclosed. It also documented the state backgrounds of several channel figures. The channel itself has not, in the sources consulted, published an ownership statement answering these reports. Readers should therefore distinguish three things: the documented facts of the licence, the registry and the capital; the reported address and personnel links to state institutions; and the characterisation of the channel as a government propaganda instrument, which is the assessment of its independent critics and is presented here as such.

A shared home with CBC Sport

An unusual operational fact connects AnewZ to Azerbaijan's sports broadcasting. While Broadcast Solutions was building the AnewZ centre against the COP29 deadline, it was also asked to relocate sister facilities in the same period: CBC Sport, the SOCAR media group's sports channel, had been based in a studio complex in Baku's Olympic Park, but that space was required for the COP29 event itself. The sports channel was moved into the same new building as AnewZ, and Broadcast Solutions supported the move of all its equipment while keeping CBC Sport on air. The episode is documented in trade press accounts of the AnewZ project and it corroborates, at the level of physical infrastructure, the close institutional proximity between the new English-language channel and the existing SOCAR media family, whatever the formal position on ownership. It also illustrates the extraordinary logistical character of Baku's COP29 period, in which a global climate conference simultaneously launched a news channel, displaced a sports channel and concentrated much of Azerbaijan's broadcast industry into a single new facility built in four months.

Assessment and current status

AnewZ remains on air as a 24-hour English-language international news channel broadcasting from Baku, operated by CIBC Global under a satellite licence won in October 2024 and led by Rufat Hamzayev. Its verified record is short but dense: company established in June 2024, broadcast centre designed and built from May to November 2024 with three studios around an automated production system, launch on 4 November 2024, COP29 broadcast partnership announced on 11 November 2024, distribution claimed in over 110 countries with a reporting presence in more than twelve, and a newsroom mixing former AzTV management with editors recruited from Euronews and other international outlets. The limits of the record are equally clear and are stated openly: the channel is young, its ultimate ownership and financing have not been officially disclosed, its audience is unmeasured in public sources, and independent Azerbaijani journalists characterise it as a state propaganda project while the channel presents itself as a global media voice. On the documented evidence, AnewZ is Azerbaijan's most ambitious attempt yet to speak directly to the English-speaking world, and its long-term standing will depend on reporting and audiences that only time can verify.