Iraqi TV

Before Saddam

Television was first introduced to Iraq in May 1956.

1979-2003: TV under Saddam

Iraqi TV was the primary TV station in Iraq during the Saddam Hussein era. Until the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003, its main coverage was patriotic music, government news and propaganda. It was bombed off air in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Another TV channel called Youth Channel (Qanaat Al-Shabaab) started broadcasting in 1994 and contained many subtitled movies and Western music before the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. These movies where shown on this channel as they would still be running in theaters in the US and Europe. Scenes of mature content were cut out of these movies, as to make them more suitable to the culture, community and age ranges of viewers.

Because Iraqi television was free to watch for anyone owning a proper satellite receiver in a proper region, it also received a substantial amount of attention from viewers in countries other than Iraq, especially during the United States' invasion of the country.

Although corporate media portrayed Iraqi television largely as an antiquated media in 21st century standards, it still gathered a small but determined Western audience.Fact|date=February 2007

Because Iraqi TV had kept portraying Saddam and the Ba'ath party as heroes of the middle east and was portraying the United States along with Bush as the Omen, the U.S. Army forced Iraqi TV to stop these broadcasts of the Ba'ath party. It was even rumored that Uday Hussein made the channel air Saddamist songs for twenty minutes of every hour of the day thus resulting eight hours of the days broadcast being Saddamist songs. Since the channel failed to cooperate with the U.S. Army, the army chose to bomb it.

The last five minutes of Iraqi TV was started with an unidentified Baath party representative/reporter who was giving a speech outside of Saddam's Radwaniyah palace. Then it showed a group of people parading and celebrating Saddam and the Ba'ath party for protecting of Iraq. After two minutes of parading the screen suddenly blacks out giving the fact that the station was bombed off. The 30-year channel of Saddam and Uday had officially ended.

2003-present

"Several TV stations have appeared since the fall of Saddam including:"
*Al Iraqiya, the government-financed television station
*Al Sharqiya, Iraq's first privately owned satellite TV station
*Al Sumaria, an independent Iraqi satellite TV network
*Nawa TV, an Iraqi TV station broadcasting in Arabic and Kurdish
*Al Baghdadiyah TV
*Al Forat, the SIIC TV station
*Ashur TV
*Biladi
*Al Masar
*Al Fayha
*Ishtar TV, an Assyrian & Chaldean TV station

Images of old Iraqi TV