Int’l Horticultural Expo 2023 Doha Celebrates ‘Saudi Day’ with Folkloric Shows

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For decades, Tele Liban has been a mainstay of Lebanese living rooms. Now the country is seeking UNESCO recognition for the archives of its pioneering Arab broadcaster.

Lebanon's Information Minister Ziad Makary told AFP that Beirut would apply to have the full archives of Tele Liban added to the UN cultural body's Memory of the World Register, which UNESCO says "aims to prevent the irrevocable loss of documentary heritage".

Tele Liban was "the first television (network) to be established in the Arab world on a state level", Makary said, adding that Lebanon had the region's "oldest audiovisual archive".

The collection includes footage that dates back "to World War II and the 1940s", although Tele Liban was only established the following decade, the minister said from his Beirut office.

Were it to join the register, it would sit alongside hundreds of other entries, spanning print, audiovisual, digital and other heritage from across the globe.

The only television channel in Lebanon until 1985, the broadcaster's archive is brimming with years of history, politics and culture not only from Lebanon but across the Arab world, during tumultuous decades in the region.

It counts more than 50,000 hours of recordings, from interviews and news programs to music concerts, including of