By Aroonim Bhuyan, IANS
Dubai : Geo News, Pakistan private television network Geo TV’s news channel, has resumed broadcast, two weeks after it was blacked out following an order from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities.
“We resumed operations from Thursday midnight after an agreement with Dubai Media City (DMC),” Geo TV’s Dubai station head Imran Mir told IANS here Friday.
Mir said the channel had restarted transmission since the situation in Pakistan was returning to normalcy.
“The situation in Pakistan is getting back to normalcy after (Pervez) Musharraf took oath as civilian president (Thursday),” he said.
He, however, said cable TV viewers in Pakistan were still not able to watch any of Geo’s channels.
“In Pakistan, Geo TV is still not accessible to people with cable TV connections. Only those with dish TV can watch our channels.
“We are glad to see GEO News channel back on air from the DMC which is committed to growing its partners’ businesses within the framework of full respect to UAE’s domestic and foreign policies,” Amina Al Rustamani, executive director of media at Dubai Technology and Media Free Zone, was quoted by the Emirates News Agency (WAM) as saying.
She said she was proud of the partnership between DMC and the International Media Corp, the parent company of Geo TV.
Geo is one of the two private Pakistani channels that were ordered to stop uplinking from Dubai their news programmes. The other is ARY TV.
This came following the complete blackout of the two channels in Pakistan after imposition of emergency in that country by Musharraf Nov 3.
Musharraf, who took oath as a civilian president Thursday after relinquishing his army uniform, has announced that emergency would be lifted Dec 16. Jan 8 has been set as the date for general elections.
Geo TV has eight channels uplinking from its office at the Dubai Media City here. Geo News has three beams covering Pakistan, the Middle East, the US and Britain.
The UAE authorities had stated that the country’s neutral foreign policy and its positive and constructive role in international affairs were the reasons behind taking the two Pakistani news channels off air.
Geo TV’s sports and entertainment channels were allowed to broadcast on the condition that these would not air any news or current affairs programme.
“All our sports and entertainment channels are operating as usual. We don’t air any news or current affairs programmes on those channels anyway,” Mir said.
Earlier this month, DMC announced that ARY One World channel, part of ARY Digital licensed under DMC, resumed its transmission from Dubai, based on mutual understanding between the two parties.