Egypt: Two Coptic Orthodox Church Channels · Global Voices
Marwa Rakha

After a series of failed attempts to launch a television channel for the Coptic faith in Egypt over the past 15 years, two channels were authorized and four more are in the pipeline.
In 2005, The Free Copts Blog celebrated Aghapy TV – from the Coptic word for “love” –  as the first ever television channel in Egypt to broadcast programs with a purely Christian outlook.
It's been a long time in the making, but the first Coptic television network, Aghapy TV, broadcast its first program Tuesday to audiences in the United States. Under the auspice of Pope Shenouda III, the Heliopolis-based network aims to bring the teachings of the Coptic Church, through liturgies, Bible studies, children's programming and more, into the homes of Copts worldwide. “The channel is under the guidance of Pope Shenuda III himself, who appointed a general committee of 13 bishops,” Aghapy executive director Father Bishoy al-Antony said. He said the channel would be run out of a convent northeast of Cairo.
Khawater reported that finally (September 2009) the channel gained the license to start airing
Arab Church Forum celebrated the second channel
Bikya Masr blogged about a call for a joint religious channel in Egypt:
The rise of religious oriented television channels has become part of the framework of Egyptian society, but a recent effort by controversial Coptic Christian lawyer Naguib Gorbail, the President of the Egyptian Federation for Human Rights, hopes to end this separation of religious ideology. He announced this past week that he will submit a proposal to Al-Azhar’s Grand Sheikh Sayyed Tantawi and Coptic Pope Shonouda to form a joint religious channel.
He says the aim of the channel would be “to address common issues of the Muslims and Copts, as soon as the end of the month of Ramadan.” … He explained that another motive behind this proposal is the existence of satellite channels that call for religious extremism and limits its programs to one religion, either Islam or Christianity and “these channels demean the other religion, whether Islam and Christianity.”