Iran: doing its best to block out sat TV

Iranians' love of foreign media is a well-documented fact, from the obsession with "Lost" to South Korea soaps.

Newsweek reports that the regime maintains its insane enmity to the Brits and the BBC, though.  After the putsch, the Revolutionary Guards made a supreme effort to block BBC's Persian TV channel. They blocked it by uplinking static to the satellite, but in doing so they scrambled a lot of popular fare from the same satellite.  

The problem:

Iran's domestic TV broadcasts--key to the regime's ability to maintain control and stability--depend on the very European satellites Iran is toying with to get its signals distributed across the country. (Arab-owned satellites have quit carrying Iran's broadcasts, and Iran has no satellies of its own.)

So chairman of broadcasting in Iran admits that when Iran messes with other people's broadcasts, they can easily retaliate, "So we have to make sure that we don't overreach ourselves."

Connectivity comes with code.