About IRIB Bazaar

IRIB Bazaar

IRIB Bazaar was a national home-shopping television channel in Iran, owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the state broadcaster usually shortened to IRIB. Known in Persian as Shabakeh-ye Bazaar, meaning the Market Channel, it broadcast in Persian from headquarters in Tehran and carried the slogan "family purchase adviser." The channel was launched on 20 November 2011 and was the third Iranian television channel to broadcast in digital mode. It was available in most provinces of the country and could be received using set-top box devices or satellite television. IRIB Bazaar closed on 17 March 2016 and was merged with IRIB TV5. Although it survived for less than four and a half years, it held a distinct place in Iranian broadcasting as the state broadcaster's first teleshopping channel and as an experiment in devoting an entire national service to markets, trade and consumer information. The surviving record judged that it did not reach its targets and described it as one of the least successful channels in IRIB.

Background and ownership

IRIB Bazaar belonged entirely to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the organisation that held the monopoly of domestic radio and television services in Iran and ranked among the largest media organisations in its region. IRIB operated national television networks, provincial services, radio networks and international channels, and its head was appointed by the Supreme Leader of Iran. During the period in which Bazaar was planned and launched, IRIB was led by Ezzatollah Zarghami, who served as the organisation's head from 2004 to 2014. The channel's final period fell under his successor, Mohammad Sarafraz, who led IRIB from 2014 to 2016. As a channel of the state broadcaster, Bazaar was not a private shopping network of the kind familiar in some other television markets. Its remit was defined in public and economic terms: it was created to support the country's industries and to give consumers correct information, and both its launch ceremony and its stated purposes reflected that public mission rather than a purely commercial one.

Launch and opening ceremony

The channel was formally opened on the evening before its launch was reported on 30 Aban 1390 in the Persian calendar, corresponding to the launch date of 20 November 2011, at a session of the cabinet attended by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and by Zarghami as head of IRIB. Contemporary Persian reporting of the ceremony recorded that the network began with the aim of supporting the country's various industries and providing correct information to the consumer. Ahmadinejad told the ceremony that production and consumption were two sides of one coin and spoke first in the economy, and that economic information and education could prevent some economic abuses. He stressed that the focus had to be on national production and doubted that non-Iranian production would find a place on the channel. He described introducing standards as a valuable task more important than the goods themselves, arguing that if people became familiar with the standards of goods, the quality of domestic production and the quality of public choice would both rise. His third point was economic education, since government and national plans could succeed only when the public accompanied them. He also insisted that the channel should not chase profit from advertising goods, and that a strong and trusted economic board should be formed to license only goods meeting the necessary standards and quality, so that no rent-seeking advantage was created for a few. From its first day, the national network was receivable on channel 16 of a digital receiver and introduced a diverse range of Iranian goods and services to its audience around the clock.

Identity, slogan and format

The name Bazaar referred to the traditional marketplace at the heart of Iranian commercial life, and it signalled the channel's subject matter immediately to Persian-speaking audiences. Persian listings of IRIB's channels recorded its slogan as "family purchase adviser," a phrase that captured its intended role as a guide standing beside the household at the moment of choice rather than as a mere seller. The service was presented as a national home-shopping channel, a format built around presenting products, prices and commercial information to viewers at home. Its picture format was recorded as 16:9 widescreen in 576i standard definition, consistent with its position as a standard-definition digital service. The channel's official website operated under the bazaartv.ir domain. Within the wider IRIB family, Bazaar sat among the specialist, themed services rather than the generalist networks, and its narrow focus on markets and shopping distinguished it from sister channels devoted to film, sport, documentaries, health or children's programming.

Stated purposes and mission

At its establishment the channel was given seven main purposes, of which economic news, educational programmes about trading and advertising were prominently recorded. Zarghami's fuller account at the launch filled out that mission. He presented the launch as an effective step towards the goals of the Year of Economic Jihad and said that teaching the reform of consumption patterns through television, the most widespread medium, was one route to national economic prosperity. He defined the channel's function as support for domestic producers and for consumers, arguing that at the macro level it would speed the growth of national economic indicators and at the micro level would lead to the flourishing of small and medium enterprises. He said IRIB was determined to emphasise domestically produced goods in order to support producers and to remove intermediary factors from the distribution cycle, thereby reducing the final price of goods. Raising the public's knowledge of buying and consumption, operating a supervisory system for accepting goods and services and operating a guarantee system were, in his account, to strengthen a culture of quality in production and customer orientation in selling. The specific services he listed for viewers included information for easy and confident buying, meeting the needs of housewives by introducing widely used goods, help with decision-making, advice on choosing, and up-to-date information about sales centres in every field.

Programming and service to viewers

The programming of IRIB Bazaar followed from that remit. Economic news formed one strand, keeping a broad national audience informed about market and commercial developments. Educational programmes about trading formed a second strand, explaining commerce and sound consumption to general viewers. Advertising and product presentation formed the third and most visible strand, in keeping with the channel's classification as a home-shopping and teleshopping service. Zarghami described the channel at its launch as a suitable space for advertising inexpensive goods for the weaker and middle-income sections of society, and as a guide that helped Iranian families reduce unnecessary journeys, save time and gain the opportunity to choose better. Small enterprises and service centres were to be introduced through classified-style announcements that connected them with customers, and producers were to be supported by having their goods introduced on a national network. Unlike IRIB's entertainment channels, Bazaar did not depend on drama series, films or comedy, and unlike the broadcaster's dedicated news network it was not a rolling news operation. Its schedule was functional and subject-led, built around information, guidance and commerce, and it operated as a twenty-four-hour service introducing Iranian goods and services.

Distribution and reception

IRIB Bazaar was available in most provinces of Iran, and its broadcast area was listed as worldwide. Terrestrially it was carried on the digital system and received with set-top box devices, reflecting the way Iranian households adapted their existing televisions during the transition to digital broadcasting. At launch it was receivable on channel 16 of a digital receiver, and its Tehran terrestrial availability was later recorded from the Jamaran transmitter on channel 43 UHF digital. A live streaming offer was also presented under the channel's name. Satellite listings recorded the channel, under the spelling IRIB Bazar TV, as an SD teleshopping service carried on Badr 5 at 26 degrees east on 11881 horizontal with symbol rate 27500, with an on-air record dated November 2014 and an off-air record dated May 2016, shortly after the channel itself had closed. Because reception depended on digital equipment, the channel's potential audience in its early years was shaped by the pace at which households across the provinces acquired set-top boxes and digital receivers.

Place in IRIB's digital expansion

Bazaar belonged to a deliberate widening of the state broadcaster's portfolio. Industry reporting at the time described it as IRIB's first teleshopping channel, offering a broad range of Iranian products to consumers, and days after its launch IRIB's chief announced a plan to launch eight further digital television channels covering entertainment, news, educational and scientific programmes, a plan discussed at the twenty-fourth meeting on media technologies in Tehran. In the wider account of the period, IRIB grew from seven terrestrial and three satellite channels in 2007 to twelve national channels, thirty-three provincial channels, two internet-based channels and ten international outlets by 2013, and from 2010 it launched digital and thematic channels dedicated to subjects including health, animation and teleshopping. A retrospective account of the Zarghami decade listed Bazaar among the thematic networks created on the digital platform, alongside the Quran, documentary, film, children's, sports, health, archive, entertainment and culture services, and reported that the national digital transition had been carried through to the point where more than eighty-four per cent of the public used digital television services. Bazaar was therefore both a product of that transition and a test of how far single-subject channels could go within it.

Assessment and difficulties

The surviving record of IRIB Bazaar was unusually frank about its performance. The channel was described as having been unable to reach its targets and as one of the least successful channels in IRIB. No detailed audience figures accompanied that judgement in the available sources, and the channel left no well-documented catalogue of flagship programmes comparable to the famous serials or talk shows of IRIB's main networks. Its reputation rested instead on the gap between an ambitious mission, set out in detail by the president and the head of IRIB at its launch, and a modest outcome. The design of the service helps explain that gap without speculation. Its subject matter had to compete with the commercial information viewers could obtain elsewhere, its digital-only availability initially restricted casual discovery by viewers still using older reception methods, and its functional schedule lacked the entertainment properties that typically built habitual channel loyalty. Whatever weight is given to each factor, the institutional verdict was clear enough to be recorded as the channel's defining assessment, and it left the Market Channel exposed when the broadcaster reviewed its portfolio in the middle of the decade.

Closure and merger into IRIB TV5

IRIB Bazaar closed on 17 March 2016 and was merged with IRIB TV5. Persian accounts agreed that the Bazaar network was closed in the final days of Esfand 1394 in the Persian calendar, the period corresponding to March 2016. The timing placed its end within a wider reorganisation of IRIB services in early 2016, the same season in which TV5's own position in the portfolio was being redefined at national level. Absorbing the defunct channel into TV5 ended Bazaar's independent existence after a run that had begun in November 2011 and brought to a close one of the broadcaster's most narrowly defined thematic experiments. The satellite listing for the channel lingered in the records for a few weeks longer, with its off-air entry dated May 2016, but the service itself did not return, and Bazaar took its place in IRIB's lists among the broadcaster's dissolved and defunct channels.

Successor and legacy

The channel's economic remit did not disappear entirely with its closure. Persian listings of IRIB's dissolved channels named Iran Kala, the Iran Goods channel, as Bazaar's replacement, and the history of that successor recorded that it had begun its activity under the Bazaar name in the years 1390 to 1394 before being closed at the end of Esfand 1394. About a year later, on 1 Esfand 1395, the service returned under the new Iran Kala title, beginning its announcements on the third transmitters across the country as the twenty-eighth channel, and from 5 Esfand 1395 it began trial broadcasts with government financial support, initially with four hours of programmes a day repeated in four turns between morning and late evening, before its official opening in Esfand 1396. That successor itself ended in 2022, closing the lineage that Bazaar had started. IRIB Bazaar's own legacy was that of a documented experiment: the state broadcaster's attempt to run a national home-shopping, trade-education and economic-news channel as a digital service, launched before the cabinet with a promise to champion Iranian production, guide family purchasing and cut out intermediaries, distributed nationally by set-top box and satellite, and judged in the end to have fallen short of the purposes set for it. Its name, invoking the traditional bazaar, had promised a television marketplace for the whole country, and its short life remained a case study in the possibilities and limits of thematic expansion during Iran's digital television transition.