The original Al Jazeera channel was started in 1996 with a US$150 million grant from the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa.

In April 1996, the BBC World Service’s Saudi-co-owned Arabic language TV station, faced with censorship demands by the Saudi Arabian government, shut down after two years of operation. Many former BBC World Service staff members joined Al Jazeera, which at the time was not yet on air. The channel began broadcasting in late 1996.^[4]

Al Jazeera’s availability (via satellite) throughout the Middle East changed the television landscape of the region. Prior to the arrival of Al Jazeera, many Middle Eastern citizens were unable to watch TV channels other than state-censored national TV stations. Al Jazeera introduced a level of freedom of speech on TV that was previously unheard of in many of these countries. Al Jazeera presented controversial views regarding the governments of many Persian Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar; it also presented controversial views about Syria’s relationship with Lebanon, and the Egyptian judiciary. Critics accused Al Jazeera of sensationalism in order to increase its audience share. Al Jazeera’s broadcasts have sometimes resulted in drastic action: For example, on 27 January 1999, Al Jazeera had critics of the Algerian government on during their live program El-Itidjah el-Mouakass (=”The Opposite Direction”). The Algerian government cut the electricity supply to at least large parts of the capital Algiers (and allegedly to large parts of the country), to prevent the program from being seen.^[5][6][7] At that time, Al Jazeera was not yet generally known in the Western world, but where it was known, the opinion about it was often favourable^[8] and Al Jazeera claimed to be the only politically independent television station in the Middle East. Al Jazeera’s well presented coverage of the Lebanese Civil War in 2000-2001 gave its viewer ratings a boost throughout the region. However, it wasn’t until late 2001 that Al Jazeera achieved worldwide recognition, when it broadcast video statements by al-Qaeda leaders.^[9]

For many years NBC was closely identified with David Sarnoff, who used it as a vehicle to sell consumer electronics. It was Sarnoff who ruthlessly stole innovative ideas from competitors, using RCA’s muscle to prevail in the courts. RCA and Sarnoff had dictated the broadcasting standards put in place by the FCC in 1938, and stole the spotlight by introducing all-electronic television to the public at the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair, simultaneously initiating a regular schedule of programs on the NBC-RCA television station in New York City. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appeared at the fair, before the NBC cameras, becoming the first U.S. president to appear on television on April 30, 1939. The David Sarnoff Library has available an actual, off-the-monitor photograph of the FDR telecast. The broadcast was transmitted by NBC’s New York television station W2XBS Channel 1 (now WNBC-TV channel 4) and was seen by about 1,000 viewers within the station’s roughly 40-mile (64 km) coverage area from their Empire State Building transmitter location. The next day, May 1, four models of RCA television sets went on sale to the general public in various New York City department stores, promoted in a series of splashy newspaper ads. It is to be noted that DuMont (and others) actually offered the first home sets in 1938 in anticipation of NBC’s announced April 1939 start-up. Later in 1939, NBC took its cameras to professional football and baseball games in the New York City area, establishing many “firsts” in the history of television. Actual NBC “network” broadcasts (more than one station) began about this time with occasional special events — such as the British King and Queen’s visit to the New York World’s Fair — being seen in Philadelphia (over the station which would become WPTZ, now KYW) and in Schenectady (over the station which would become WRGB), two pioneer stations in their own right. The most ambitious NBC television “network” program of this pre-war era was the telecasting of the Republican National Convention in 1940 from Philadelphia, which was fed live to New York and Schenectady.^[6] However, despite major promotion by RCA, television set sales in New York in the 1939-1940 period were disappointing, primarily due to the high cost of the sets, and the lack of compelling regular programming. Most sets were sold to bars, hotels and other public places, where the general public viewed special sporting and news events.

Television’s experimental period ended, and the FCC allowed full commercial telecasting to begin on July 1, 1941. NBC’s New York station W2XBS received the first commercial license, adopting the call letters WNBT (it is now WNBC-TV). The first official, paid television commercial on that day broadcast by any station in the United States was for Bulova Watches, seen just before the start of a Brooklyn Dodgers telecast on NBC’s WNBT, New York. A test pattern, featuring the newly assigned WNBT call letters, was modified to look like a clock, complete with functioning hands. The Bulova logo, with the phrase “Bulova Watch Time”, was shown in the lower right-hand quadrant of the test pattern. A photograph of the NBC camera telecasting the test pattern-advertisement for that first official TV commercial can be seen at http://www.earlytelevision.org/images/rca_bulova_ad-1.jpg Limited programming continued until the U.S. entered World War II. Telecasts were curtailed in the early years of the war, then expanded as NBC began to prepare for full service upon the war’s end. On V-E Day, May 8, 1945, WNBT broadcast hours of news coverage, and remotes from around New York City. This event was pre-promoted by NBC with a direct-mail card sent to television set owners in the New York area.^[7] At one point, a WNBT camera placed atop the marquee of the Hotel Astor panned the crowd below celebrating the end of the war in Europe. The vivid coverage was a prelude to television’s rapid growth after the war ended. The NBC television network grew from its initial post-war lineup of four stations. The 1947 World Series featured two New York teams (Yankees and Dodgers), and local TV sales boomed, since the games were telecast in New York. More stations along the East Coast and in the Midwest were connected by coaxial cable through the late 1940s, and in September 1951 the first transcontinental telecasts took place.

The early 1950s brought success for NBC in the new medium. Television’s first big star, Milton Berle, drew large audiences to NBC with his antics on the The Texaco Star Theater. Legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini, who had been conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra on radio since 1937, conducted ten concerts on NBC television between 1948 and 1952. All of these concerts were simulcast on radio, a pioneering event at that time. The simulcasts included a two-part complete performance in concert of Verdi’s opera Aida, starring Richard Tucker and Herva Nelli, and the first complete televised performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The network launched Today and The Tonight Show, which would bookend the broadcast day for over fifty years, and which still lead their competitors.