LAUSR

ABSTRACT This article examines the formative years of the first television station in the Middle East and the Arab World: Baghdad Television. The Hashemite Monarchy recognized television’s potential as an effective tool of reconciliation with an increasingly disenchanted population and a means for homogenization and knowledge production. However, the professionals responsible for maintaining television came from social and economic backgrounds that suffered under or did not benefit directly from the Hashemites and their stakeholders. This specialized cadre opposed the undemocratic features of the government as evidenced in the content they created, produced, directed, or performed on Baghdad Television. Television specialists had their own vision of what the future of Iraq should look like. Their expectations manifested in a sociocultural attunement process facilitated through television wherein aired content, explicitly or tacitly, contradicted government messages and highlighted deeply rooted economic, political, and social problems in Iraq. This article relies on archival research, statistical reports, interviews, memoirs, televised performances, news segments, radio broadcasts, and newspapers to trace the history of Baghdad Television during Monarchic Iraq.