Reaching His Prime Time in Afghanistan

REACHING HIS PRIME TIME IN AFGHANISTAN
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Frank Ahrens]
Saad Mohseni, director of the Moby Media Group, was in Washington for meetings at the State Department and with U.S. media and business counterparts. His five-year-old company -- which got start-up help from the U.S. Agency for International Development -- owns two of the most-watched television networks in Afghanistan, an FM radio station, a video production house, an ad agency, a music label and a small magazine. In addition to his nightly news program and a "Good Morning Afghanistan"-style talk show, Mohseni's Tolo TV network runs popular Indian soap operas, has a singing-contest show a la "American Idol," an amateur stand-up comedy show where comics get laughs in Persian Dari, a satire program that shows lawmakers in embarrassing situations and will, this fall, begin showing dubbed episodes of the Fox thriller "24." In some ways, Mohseni, 41, is the Rupert Murdoch of Afghanistan. Not only is he an entrepreneurial media lord with Australian roots who buys his soap operas from Murdoch's Indian Star TV network, his programming has been criticized as sensational, lowbrow and corruptive to the culture.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/13/AR200709...
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