Al-Manar

Al-Manar was founded in 1991. The TV station is fully affiliated with Hezbollah, and calls itself the Station of the Resistance. It is part of the Lebanese Communication Group, which also includes Al-Nour Radio. The programming is strongly anti-Israel and anti-US.

Al-Manar first began terrestrial broadcasting in 1991, and was licensed pursuant to Decree No. 13476 of November 5, 1998. It started satellite broadcasting in 2000 and unified terrestrial and satellite broadcasts in 2014.

During the July 2006 war between Lebanon and Israel, Israeli warplanes struck the channel’s headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburb. Broadcasts were cut off for only a few minutes then resumed.

On December 4, 2015, Arabsat (an Arab-league affiliated satellite operator headquartered in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) blocked the broadcast of Al-Manar channel via its satellites, accusing it and another station, called Al-Mayadeen, of violating the operators’ charter of honor.

The TV station’s General Manager is Ibrahim Farhat; its news director is Ali Hayek and the program director is Mohammad Cherri.

Key facts

Audience Share

6.4%

Ownership Type

Private

Geographic Coverage

National

Content Type

Free content

Data Unavailable

ownership data is not publicly available, company/channel denies the release of information or does not respond, no public record exists

1 ♥

Media Companies / Groups

Lebanese Communication Group L.C.G. SAL

Ownership

Ownership Structure

Al-Manar presents itself as Hezbollah's television station. It is part of the Lebanese Communication Group L.C.G SAL, whose board only includes high-ranking Hezbollah officials, including two former Members of Parliament Abdallah Kassir and Mohammad Haidar. However the distribution of shares among those officials is not made public in the document released by the Ministry of Justice's Commercial Register.