International (MNN)–SAT-7 just marked its tenth year of outreach to the Middle East. Founder and CEO, Terry Ascott says they celebrated Wednesday in Lebanon with a live 2-hour broadcast that reached audiences throughout the region.
In 1996, SAT-7 began as only a two hour a week service. It now broadcasts 24 hours a day, carrying seven to nine hours of new programming each day. Nearly 80 percent of its programs are made in the region, many in SAT-7’s own studios in Lebanon and Egypt.
There were a lot of naysayers, remembers Ascott. “There were alot of people that said we would get jammed, we’d never get Christians to go in front of a camera because of fear of retribution. People said that the service would be jammed, talked about the fact that there were no music videos available, no programs no dubbed programs, no original programs that we could draw on.”
Today, SAT-7’s programs help equip the churches of this minority Christian community, training their congregations and giving the wider non-Christian audience a better understanding of the beliefs and teachings of Christ.
Funding was (and is) another big issue. As expenses grew, their future was often uncertain. However, with a decade behind them, SAT-7 is looking ahead to growth. “One of our immediate goals”, explains Ascott, “is to try to develop a critical mass of programming in Turkish for the Turkish speaking areas of the Middle East and Farsi for Iran and Afghanistan where it’s understood quite well. We’ve also got a vision to have a children’s channel.”
Ascott finishes with this vision: “With new emergent technologies, including wireless broadband Internet and G3 video for mobile phones, we have many new avenues through which we will be able to touch many more lives.”
If you want to help, go to: http://www.sat7.org.
