Afghan TV beams again
O'seas support fuels revival
Offers of assistance -- mainly programming -- have come from Iran, India, Turkey, Germany, Japan and China, while Unesco has set aside $35,000 to train technical staff.
Italy's media mogul and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi offered Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai an entire TV station when they met in Rome earlier this month.
Afghan TV station head Abdul Afiz does not, however, yet have a clear idea of what exactly the Italian offer entails.
"I had talks with an official from Italy, but I'm not sure what was promised," Afiz said. "Once it gets here, we'll know more, but we're waiting for the transport to improve to be able to get it here."
While Afiz and his team will welcome modern broadcasting equipment, they have already performed miracles with the equipment they hid when the Taliban swept to power in 1996, imposing harsh Islamic law on the country under which all entertainment, including film and TV, was banned.
Back on the air
Within hours of the Taliban's retreat from Kabul on the night of Nov. 12, Afghan television was back on air, complete with a female announcer.
With the Taliban now ousted throughout the country and a new interim administration headed by Pashtun tribal leader Karzai in place, TV has again become the main source of entertainment for Afghans in Kabul.
On air from 6-9 p.m. -- sometimes till 10 -- the station's blend of news, music, sport and movies is watched by 500,000 viewers nightly, according to Afiz.
While he dreams of a 24-hour modern service that will reach all Afghans, for now he is content to try to restore Afghan television to the glory of pre-Taliban times when it broadcast six hours a day.
Afiz's immediate challenge is to find other sources of cash.
With barely any advertising to speak of, the broadcaster's main source of funding is the defense ministry, which in return demands a nightly dose of "military programming" -- interviews with soldiers, profiles on military commanders and highlights of the five-year battle by the Northern Alliance against the Taliban.
Raising antennas
Afiz also aims to replace the high-quality antennas on a mountaintop near Kabul that were destroyed during the U.S. bombing campaign against the Taliban.
Regional 200-watt transmitters were moved from outlying areas and mounted on the roof of a hotel -- enough to do the job of reaching most of Kabul.
But for a proper service, Afiz wants a 500-watt antenna installed on the mountain again.
Paying for programming, too, is a problem, given that 90% is made locally. Which is why he dug into his archives and found material from five years ago, much of it deteriorated, due to poor storage conditions.
And then there are the government censors, installed by the Soviets during their 1979-89 invasion of Afghanistan and who have reappeared with the reopening of the station.
But whereas during Soviet times the censors were answerable directly to the politburo and were "very busy," these days the officials are drawn from the defense, interior and secret service departments and "do not interfere at all."
Asked what they do all day, Afiz answered, "They come to the office, drink tea and then go home again."
Has the U.S. offered to replace the antenna its warplanes bombed or assist in any other way? "Not yet," he replied. "They're still too busy looking for Osama bin Laden."
