Television
There are two state broadcasters and an increasing number of private broadcasters. Figures from the CIA World Factbook state more than 98 television channels in 1995, and 57 AM and 14 FM radio channels in 1999. Pan-Arab channels such as Al-Jazeera are also very popular among viewers, especially for news, as private broadcasters are forbidden to broadcast their own news, instead only focusing on entertainment or music. The Ministry of Information controls content in the state-owned broadcast media. Egypt was the first Arab nation to have its own satellite, Nilesat 101 which allows the Egyptian TV and film industry to supply much of the Arab-speaking world with shows from its Media Production City. The previously tight controls on state TV and radio gave way to even and fair coverage of all political parties involved in the Egyptian presidential election of 2005, a first for Egyptian media. However in 2006 several journalists working for the Cairo branch of the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera were detained for investigating subjects such as police brutality and "harming the country's reputation".
Read more about this topic: Egyptian Media
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“Television ... helps blur the distinction between framed and unframed reality. Whereas going to the movies necessarily entails leaving one’s ordinary surroundings, soap operas are in fact spatially inseparable from the rest of one’s life. In homes where television is on most of the time, they are also temporally integrated into one’s “real” life and, unlike the experience of going out in the evening to see a show, may not even interrupt its regular flow.”
—Eviatar Zerubavel, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life, ch. 5, University of Chicago Press (1991)
“Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)