| abstract
| - The Gazan News Company was founded on 6 March 1977 under the administration of William Rosegild through the National Prosperity Reconstruction Act, 1977, which allocated funds for the creation of a news company which would provide reliable and factual information for the public. Intended to be a state information relay network, the company, referred to commonly as Gazan News, was sponsored by the government after its creation to provide both radio and television broadcasts, with radio broadcasts beginning on 11 January 1978 and television broadcasts beginning on 21 May 1978. Originally limited to reports on domestic policy and government affairs with the public, views began to decline because of the uninteresting and boring subject matters that did not interest the public at large. As such, by the beginning of 1979, many members of the National Assembly called for the privatisation of the company so that a board of members would be able to better analyse the wants of the market rather than the government as a whole. Rosegild and his administration, however, wanted the company to remain largely committed to broadcasting both factual and relevant topics rather than feeding a public which had become akin to sensationalist news sources during the conflicts to establish independence in the earlier half of the decade. In a move of compromise, the administration backed off from direct government intervention, and instead, simply funded the company and established a separate, profit-motivated board of directors. In order to better establish Gazan News as a private, non-state intervened news source, the board decided to give the company a new image. As such, on 3 July 1980, the board adopted the name Gildwall Media Company, in honour of the first radio personality famous on Gazan airwaves, Franz Gildwall. The new board decided to change the programming of the news source from domestic news to include various topics, including politics, business, crime, sports, and culture. The focus of the company was also changed from simply domestic news to include more international and regional programmes as well. The company received permission from the National Assembly to broadcast on several different airwaves on radio networks to include both news and popular music of several different formats. As such, Gildwall Radio channels 1, 2, and 3 began broadcasting separately on 16 August 1980. The same diversification was done with television channels for news, adult-based shows, youth-based shows, and sports programming, and Gildwall Television channels 1, 2, 3, and 4 began broadcasting on 1 October 1980. The new format and programming was extremely popular, with the company soon attracting not only a Gazan audience, but a regional one as well. Programming coverage was extended into Israel in 1983 and to Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt in 1984. The extreme profitability of the company saw a reduction in public funding, and in 1986, the government of David Mortiz privatised the company on 18 April 1986, with it being incorporated independently on the 20th of the same month as Gildwall Media Ltd. Gildwall continued to remain popular on a regional basis throughout that same decade, with coverage eventually being expanded into most Middle Eastern countries by the beginning of 1990, excluding Iran, Afghanistan, and Kurdistan. The beginning of the Gulf War that same year brought Gildwall to international attention as being one of the few internationally syndicated media companies to have an extremely objective and slightly anti-American approach to the events unfolding in Iraq. As such, those sympathetic to an anti-American and anti-invasion viewpoint began to take up Gildwall as their primary source of news, with those people mostly being Middle Easterners and their descendants who lived abroad. In 1991, Gildwall opened its first offices in London and New York, and began to syndicate its news programming to North America and Europe on 17 September 1991. Since then, the viewership of Gildwall expanded exponentially, inducing massive profits and causing an outright rise in the ability of the company to cover news globally. Throughout the last decade of the 20th century, Gildwall expanded from bureaus in just the Middle East to at least one bureau on every continent in the world expect Antarctica. The September 11 attacks saw another boost in the views of Gildwall as a news source, and the Iraq War also increased its foreign viewership. Gildwall began to build a reliable, if not pro-Jewish and pro-Islamic, base from which it gained much attention throughout primarily Western audiences. As such, Gildwall has become a news source aimed at Middle Easterners living outside of the Middle East, as well as a source of both information and entertainment for people living within the region.
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