Though the decision to start television service was taken earlier by the late
King Farouk, the
British-French-Israeli Suez invasion delayed work until late 1959. Egypt then signed a contract with
Radio Corporation of America to provide the country with a television network and the capacity to manufacture sets. Construction of the radio and television center was completed in 1960, and the first Egyptian television broadcast started on 21 July 1960. Broadcast transmission began on 21 July 1960, at 07:00, the Egyptian TV was started with a five-hour-transmission. The transmission began with Qur'anic recitation followed by the opening of the parliament and a speech by President Gamal Abdel Nasser. This was followed by the national anthem, then the news bulletin and finally ended with Qur'anic recitation. , the headquarters of the Egyptian Television Network, Cairo in 1972 Broadcast began from
Maspero television building whose transmission began in 1960. Ever since, the Egyptian television maintained its service of broadcasting through the different channels which serve different classes of the Egyptian society. The big building that takes its name after the French Egyptologist,
Gaston Maspero, is deemed a distinguished site with its circular shape that receives over 30 thousand individuals daily. Egypt is the first country in the Middle East and Africa to provide TV broadcasting. On 13 August 1970 a new decree established the Egyptian Radio and Television Union (
ERTU) and created four distinct sectors: Radio, Television, Engineering and Finance, each of which had a chairman who reported directly to the
Minister of Information. After the
1973 war, both television production and transmission facilities were upgraded to color transmission under the
SECAM system. The Egyptian broadcasting changed from SECAM to
PAL in 1992.
Transmission Hours The Egyptian television began with a six-hour-broadcasting channel; however the broadcasting hours changed to 13 hours/day. Later, in 1961, a second channel was launched, and a third channel was launched in 1962. Thus, the total broadcasting hours of the three channels was 25–30 hours/day. The contents of the shows reflected people's interests at the time. In the early 1980s, the Egyptian TV witnessed development in all domains and the orientation was to activate the media sovereignty principle through engineering and geographic expansion for a state-wide-coverage. == Private channels ==