The Satellite Subversives

SomeoneYouDontKnow writes: "The New York Times (free registration reguired, blah blah blah) has a fascinating article about a former Iranian rock star who has launched a pirate TV station broadcasting back into Iran from, of all places, L.A. From reading the article, I can't help but compare Narional Iranian Television to U-62 from the movie "UHF" because of its ultra-low-budget operations and programming, but, like the fictional station, it's wildly popular. OK, I know this is a little off the beaten track for Slashdot articles, but it's nice to see that there's a broadcaster out there more interested in providing a meaningful service than figuring out ways to squeeze more and more money out of viewers."

Comments

I think it's amazing the US govt isn't interested

[chuckgrosvenor]

The biggest export of the US as far as impact, is entertainment. Here, they have an audience hungry for content, and a station that would be happy to take support and attack a regime they clearly have a problem with.

One cruise missile could fund this station for a year, and would do more to improving relations with the people of the goverment. Why sacrifice our people fighting a useless war with them? Or attacking their government when their own people clearly dislike it.

I guess it doesn't play as well in the polls for the politicians to say "We fund pirate TV stations" as it is to say "We decided to go in and blow sh*t up!". Let's face it, the current administration has all but declared they want to go in and wage war.

Dejavu

[mderdem]

This reminds me the early days of private Tv channels in Turkey. Till 1988 private TV channels were not allowed and we had to watch the nice but limited government channels. One day the son of the president of the government started a company in Europe and they broadcasted to Turkey via satellite. And after that day Turkey had a very fast transition from communism style tv broadcasting to almost US style tv broadcasting. This great change almost influenced everything in the country including music industry and news and freedom of speech. Fortunately the parliment in Turkey listened to the communities to legalize the private TV channels but I am not sure if this would be the case for Iranians since they are already banning Turkish channels broadcasting over Iran.