War spurs rush to sign up for Middle Eastern channels. (On the HomeFront--Impact of War).

With demand apparently growing for a non-American perspective of the war with Iraq, more Los Angeles residents are installing satellite systems and getting direct access to the controversial Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel and other Middle Eastern channels--even Iraq TV.

Local retailers, many of them mom and pop operations, have benefited from more aggressive marketing of the channels by satellite broadcasting companies.

Satellite distributors GlobeCast Inc., based in New York and a unit of France Telecom, and Colorado-based EchoStar Communications Corp.'s Dish Network have been featuring up to a dozen channels from the Middle East for their customers.

GlobeCast has been particularly aggressive. Through an email marketing campaign, it has instructed its L.A. customers to order its free Middle Eastern channels for extra war coverage, said Rona MacKay, booking agent at the Los Angeles office.

Neither GlobeCast nor EchoStar would provide local statistics, but dealers in the area who provided installation and service for them verify the results.

"Since the war started, many customers are saying they do not trust U.S. newscasts and want to see news directly from the other side," said Hutch Bemirjian, owner of Sky Digital Inc. in Studio City, which received 250 orders for Middle East satellite packages last month, up from its normal monthly volume of 150.

Abdalla Nour, president of Alpha Satellite, a service provider based in San Gabriel, said he has noticed high demand for AI-Jazeera from that area's Chinese-American community since the war started.

World Wide Satellite Inc. in West Los Angeles has received significantly more calls for Middle Eastern channels from people of Middle Eastern descent as well as those who aren't, according to its owner, Ester Wall. She cited a local film production company that has ordered Al-Jazeera on its studio TV. Though very little of the coverage is in English, Americans get an Iraqi point of view from the images, Wall said.

Viewers apparently became interested in the foreign channels after seeing brief glimpses of graphic war images from Middle Eastern news channels on U.S. networks, which have various footage-sharing arrangements.

The new viewers extend beyond Middle Eastern expatriates to include Americans tuning in for the often-gruesome footage. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week denounced AI-Jazeera's broadcast of video showing captured U.S. soldiers in Iraq. He said it was a violation of the Geneva Convention to show war prisoners "in a humiliating fashion."

The Middle Eastern channels have also raised objections within some apartment buildings in the Wilshire corridor, home to a large number of Iranian-Americans. Building owners said political tensions between the Persian and American-born communities are running high.

One building manager said the building discontinued providing Iran TV to its residents after some tenants complained it was too political. It is now considering Pars TV, another Iranian network.

Nonetheless, U.S. media outlets have noticed the viewer interest. Last Thursday, CNN broadcast a live retransmission of an interview with Iraq's information minister on Al-Jazeera. His comments contained strong anti-American rhetoric as he urged Iraqis to continue fighting.

The formats of the Arab news networks are similar to CNN and MSNBC--news anchors interviewing experts, embedded reporting, images of military leaders convening, maps, civilian interviews. Among the differences: prices for several varieties of oil mix with stock indexes in the lower-left corner of the screen, and the news ticker runs from left to right to accommodate the Arabic. Al-Jazeera has 35 million viewers worldwide.

GlobeCast shows a variety of Middle East channels that air for free, including Jordan TV, Yemen TV, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait TV, and Iraq TV. Customers must obtain a satellite dish, usually from an installer, and plug-in coordinates that are listed on GlobeCast's Web site.

Dish Network charges $29.99 per month for 10 Middle Eastern channels, including Al-Jazeera, which charges for retransmission of its broadcasts.

Besides following the war, some believe there is value in watching events unfold through another culture's eyes. "It is important for Americans to see news from the Middle East," Zia Atabay, owner of North Hollywood-based National Iranian TV (NITV), a Farsi language news broadcasting station. "To do business with a country you must know its culture."

Should the U.S. complete its mission, Atabay said, stations like Al-Jazeera will be valuable to American businesspeople seeking to rebuild Iraq.