Film subtitles in Farsi offered

A Saudi-owned media company launched a 24-hour satellite movie channel featuring subtitles in Farsi, making Hollywood films widely available to non-English speaking Iranians.

Mazen Hayek, the Director of Marketing for MBC Group, said the company hopes to attract Farsi-speaking viewers living in Arab countries including the UAE and Bahrain.

The station, called MBC Persia, plans to primarily broadcast Hollywood-produced comedy, action and romantic movies – all with Farsi subtitles, he said.

Though satellite dishes were declared illegal in Iran in 1995, they continue to dot Tehran's skyline and authorities rarely enforce the ban. Television stations in Iran, including the state-run TV station, show Western movies in different languages, but American movies rarely have Farsi subtitles. Bootlegged copies of Western movies can also be bought on Iran's black market.

Though MBC Persia will make American movies available to a wider Iranian audience, MBC says the channel is not an attempt to overtly inject Iran with Western culture.

Owned by Saudi businessman Waleed Al Ibrahim, MBC is headquartered in Dubai, a booming city-state in the Emirates that has the largest population of Iranian expatriates in the Arab World.

The media conglomerate has six other channels, which broadcast entertainment, news and children's programmes in Arabic and English. Its 24-hour satellite news channel is Al-Arabiya.

In 2003, Iran launched an Arabic-language state-run satellite news channel called Al-Alam, meaning 'The World' in English.

There is no Arab-owned – private or government-run – news channel in Farsi, and Hayek said there were no plans yet to launch an MBC news station in Farsi now.

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