Muslim Television Ahmadiyya International

Launch

The first channel to be launched by the MTA network was AMP or Ahmadiyya Muslim Presentation on 31st of January 1992 and was established by Mirza Tahir Ahmad (fourth Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community). It started of with weekly transmissions broadcasting the Friday Sermon and later on 7th January 1994, AMP was rebranded to MTA1 Al-Awla and started broadcasting 24/7, becoming the first TV channel to broadcast Islamic programmes globally and soon on 1st of April 1996, it began it's 24-Hour service to become the first 24-hour, commercial-free television station. It has remained a non-profit and commercial-free station and the main source of funding is the members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

Members

The majority of its workers are volunteers with just a small percentage of paid full-time staff. Out of the 300 staff members that work in MTA’s London offices, 90% are volunteers who happily dedicate their time to assist in the running of the network.

Channels & Region

Currently there are four free-to-air and subscription free Channels and one online channel which are part of the MTA network: MTA1, MTA2, MTA3 and MTA Africa 1.

MTA1 broadcasts internationally. In 2004 MTA2 was launched to specialise in European languages and so is solely broadcast across Europe and small parts of the Middle East. MTA3 was launched in 2007 as a purely Arabic language channel which broadcasts across the Middle East, North Africa and North America. A Teleport system is also functioning in the USA to transmit MTA1+3 (which is normal MTA1 with a 3 hour delay) and MTA Infocast for the benefit of MTA’s viewers in North America. MTA Africa 1 is a newly-launched channel specially for the African Viewers and broadcasts mainly in Africa and Western Europe.

Programmes & Audience

Muslim Television Ahmadiyya International is the main source of media for the Ahmadiyya Muslim community and also aims to spread the message of Islam around the world. Some of the key programs broadcast include the Friday Sermon by the current Ahmadiyya Caliphate, educational and cultural programs, world news, and a various Talk Shows. These can be watched on TV as well as through smartphone apps for Android, iOS and Nokia.

Due to the worldwide audience, a number of programs are simultaneously translated into different languages such as English, German, Bengali, French, Urdu and others. An example of this is the program Friday Sermon which is translated live simultaneously in at least 8 languages including Arabic, Swahili and Indonesian. This is later translated into more languages like Russian and Spanish etc. All together there can be 16 translations (more or less) per sermon.