by SILVIA GAIANI

The 1990s marked the spread of transnational Arabic satellite television with the launch of the London-based Middle East Broadcasting Corp. (MBC).

Fifteen years later, the number of satellite channels targeting the Middle East has multiplied. Besides some dozen transnational, pan-Arabic TV stations, a number of former terrestrial-only, state- and private-run broadcasters are now also distributed via satellite. Cable households in the region are reported to receive up to 100 broadcasting channels, including a number of transnational services in Persian, Kurdish, English, French, Urdu, Hindi, Malayalam, Tagalog, etc.

The majority of satellite channels, which transmit programming in Arabic, are general entertainment or special interest. However, there are also a number of "mixed" programming channels, covering a broad scope of fictional and non-fictional fare.

Arabic satellite stations, those covering news and current affairs either on a 24-hour basis or as part of their overall program mix, have received the most Western attention from journalism observers, media researchers and critics, for their appeal on a Pan-Arab audience and their professional approach to news and current affairs.

Al Jazeera in particular has become the most popular television station in the Middle East and the first Arabic channel to provide extensive live news coverage, even sending reporters to previously unthinkable places, such as Israel.

Its global recognition is so wide that Al Jazeera was voted the world's fifth most influential brand in a poll of branding professionals conducted in January 2005 by Brandchannel, an online magazine. Al Jazeera came just behind Apple's iPod, Google, IKEA and Starbucks, mega brands that net billions of dollars each year.

Al Jazeera was founded in Qatar in 1996 with financing from the country's young Emir and a staff largely drawn from a failed Saudi-British joint venture in satellite television. Although it is not the first transnational Arabic television station, it is the first to make open, contentious politics central to its mission.

Al Jazeera has managed to develop an independent identity that can be attributed to having a staff of Arabs from different countries and to the intention of addressing issues that have universal appeal to Arab audiences.

Al Jazeera is seen as the best broadcast organization to offer a pro-Arab perspective as it covers live events, controversial issues and content, as well as domestic, regional and international news.

Before the satellite television revolution, most Arab viewers depended on terrestrial state television, and perhaps on foreign radio broadcasts. Neither gave direct, immediate visual access to political developments abroad, in other Arab countries, or even in their own countries. When Egyptians protested in one part of Cairo, for example, Egyptians outside that neighborhood would have heard about it only by word of mouth, since Egyptian television would not have covered it.

Most Arabs viewed traditional news programs with skepticism, understanding clearly that the concepts and images were limited. Now, virtually any protest or election or political event is immediately covered by Al Jazeera and its many competitors.

Talk shows on Al Jazeera and other Arabic television stations have contributed enormously to building the underpinnings of a more pluralist political culture, one that welcomes and thrives on open and contentious political debate. News coverage of protests and struggles has opened up the realm of possibility across the Arabic world, inspiring political activists and shifting the balance of power on the ground.

Al Jazeera's programs have famously revolutionized political discourse in the Arabic world, fearlessly tackling taboos of all stripes. Open, frank discussions of social issues (AIDS, education, women's rights), economic issues, and especially political issues have brought those subjects - which had previously been discussed only in private salons or in limited circulation and elite newspapers - into everyone's living rooms.

Faisal Al Qassem's provocative program, "The Opposite Direction," which became one of the most watched and discussed television shows in the Arabic world in the late 1990s, is a symptom of ravenous hunger for such frank political debate.

In reporting news, Al Jazeera has demonstrated "contextual objectivity" — the communication and treatment of news from different perspectives. Rather than covering just the event, the news becomes more about the description and analysis of an event.

In line with its slogan, Al Jazeera believes that its responsibility is to present "the opinion and the other opinion."

Internationally, Al Jazeera has taken the traditionally dominant news services to task and may have ended the Western monopoly of global dissemination of information.

Al Jazeera has amplified the Arabic perspective and showed the West that the global marketplace of news and information is no longer dominated by the United States.

The world no longer has to see the Arabic world through only Western lenses; the station has forced many Americans and Europeans to recognize - although not necessarily appreciate - the existence of significant cultural divides.