Orient TV also known as Television al-Mashreq TV (in Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

 تلفزيون المشرق) is a Syrian

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

 satellite television channel previously based in Damascus

Damascus

Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...

, Syira, and presently based in Dubai

Dubai

Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...

, UAE. The station that broadcasts round the clock is owned by Ghassan Abboud, a Syrian businessman and journalist and an opposition figure to the Syrian Baath regime.

Plans for launching of a channel were disclosed by Abboud end of 2007, and test broadcasts started by May 2008 with logo of the station and music from Fairuz

Fairuz

Nouhad Wadi Haddad , famously known as Fairuz is a Lebanese singer who is widely considered to be the most famous living singer in the Arab world and one of the best known of all time...

. Official broadcasts and programming started on 2 February 2009. Programming is a mixture of Syrian and international news, political, cultural, social and sports programs and television series, comedies, reality shows and long feature films. The station was broadcasting through Damascus when Syrian Inernal Security Forces raided the station on July 27, 2010 stopping its broadcasts and putting pressure on station employees to leave their jobs. Ghassan Abboud moved the operations where he resumed broadcasting. Signals of the broadcasts can be received on both Nilesat

Nilesat

Nilesat is an Egyptian company, and the name of a series of Egyptian communications satellites. It was established in 1996 with the purpose of operating Egyptian satellites and their associated ground control station and uplinking facilities...

 and Arabsat and online through the website of the station.