Iranian State Television

Television was first introduced to Iran in 1958, as a privately owned and commercially operated enterprise, before being nationalised, remaining a state-controlled monopoly, first of National Iranian Radio and Television, and following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. Television, or more specifically IRIB, is nicknamed "glass wool" by locals, because of the appearance of clerics with long beards comparable to sheep wool, appearing behind the "glass", the television set.