Afghanistan: First 24-Hour News TV Channel Launched

7 July  2010

A home-grown 24-hour TV news channel has been launched in Afghanistan by Saad Mohseni, the country’s biggest media mogul. The politically connected Moby Media Group chairman last week launched a CNN-style news feed to what he expects to be about 1 million viewers shaping Afghanistan’s future, from government to foreigners and even the resurgent Taliban.

Mohseni told Reuters in an interview that “in Afghanistan, you need to know what’s going on. If there’s a bomb blast in Karte-Seh and you’ve got your kids going to school there, you need to know which roads are closed, if security forces are in control of the area.”

A strong critic of President Hamid Karzai, Mr Mohseni and his brother Jahid control a modest but growing media empire based out of a cluster of dilapidated houses at the end of a barricaded cul-de-sac, guarded by a dozen men armed with AK-47s. From a small upstairs office walled with flatscreens and curtained off from the street, the fast-talking ex-banker has in 5 years gone from owning a single Kabul FM radio station to cutting deals with News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch to beam-in Persian-language programmes to 120 million people in Iran and central Asia.

 Source: Radio Netherlands