Before 2001 Afghans had only the Taliban's Radio Sharia. So they depended on transistor radios tuned to external services, primarily the BBC Persian service, for independent information.
In that light the explosion of media in Afghanistan following the end of Taliban rule in 2001 is a success story. But Afghan journalists are being killed on the security frontline, jailed or silenced. The government and parliament are in conflict over the country's media law, and journalistic professionalism is in its infancy.
The current diverse clutch of Afghan media owners include the Australian-Afghan Mohseni brothers, wannabe politicians who lives overseas, mullahs with links to Iran and powerful provincial warlords who were cashed up by the US during the 1980s civil war. But they also notably include more than 35 independent, community radio stations across the country. Two are owned and managed by women.
In a country with high illiteracy rates, especially in rural areas, newspapers are struggling but radio is strong. Network and local television are growing, particularly in those regions, like Herat, which have electricity.
Measuring audiences is still an infant science and quantitative and qualitative research is bedevilled by demography and security. But the Mohseni brothers' Tolo TV is probably the most popular television network in Afghanistan. An overwhelmingly young population enjoys its Indian soap operas, racy by conservative Afghan mores. So it is popular with advertisers.
The Government has tried to censor Tolo and another leading network. The latter bowed to pressure. Tolo refused, more out of respect for its bottom line than for media freedom.
Financial viability is crucial in an industry which has expanded so rapidly, with networks and stations vying for a share of the advertising market which in 2006 was worth up to AUD $31 million.
The International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) is a dominant advertiser. As part of its psychological operations to win hearts and minds, it produces and pays stations to broadcast a range of messages on human rights, health, agriculture and Western development assistance. In some regions military advertising is considerably greater than commercial advertising. This calls into question Afghan media's long-term financial viability.
From ISAF's strategic perspective, to rely on one-way messages in an era of multi-platform, interactive media is curiously old-hat. Mobile phones have leapfrogged the internet as a communications channel. Phone-in audience participation — from discussion forums to music requests — is clearly popular.
Television is fine for broadcasting community messages or warnings such as 'don't approach