Television

At that time, only the rich families could own a television set in the UAE, others used to just sit around at a coffee shop or at the “Majlis” where all the men gather and watch it together. This incident happened a few years ago when I was at my great aunt’s house, we were all together then the news came on Dubai TV, the news presenter was a local man. So suddenly, my great aunt freaks out and asks her grandchildren to cover her up because the news presenter is going to see her. Maybe this is not how people were before, maybe it’s just because she is old, but to them at that time, the television was one of the weirdest inventions because it was just a box with a screen.
It was so hard for people to get reception because the TV signals were only from two stations. One station was Al Kuwait television, it was donated by them to the United Arab Emirates between the 1960s and the 1970s. They started viewing Kuwaiti television shows and some songs and also a couple of foreign movies. The other television station that provided the reception was ARAMCO, which was also the oil company. After that, they started producing local talk shows which encouraged more people to join the media.