Al Jazeera November 1996. It offered 6 hours of programming per day; increased to 12 hours by the end of 1997. It was broadcast to the immediate neighborhood as a terrestrial signal, and on cable, as well as through satellites (which was also free to users in the Arab world), although Qatar, and many other Arab countries, barred private individuals from having satellite dishes until 2001. At the time of the Al Jazeera Media Network launch Arabsat was the only satellite broadcasting to the Middle East, and for the first year could only offer Al Jazeera a weak C-band transponder that needed
Al Jazeera using a chroma key studio on 13 September 2009. Similar to Sky News, Al Jazeera broadcast from that studio while the channel's main newsroom was given a new look. The channel relaunched, with new graphics and music along with a new studio, on 1 November 2009, the 13th birthday of the channel. While Al Jazeera has a large audience in the Middle East, the organization and the original Arabic channel in particular have been criticised and involved in a number of controversies. In May 2000 Bahrain banned Al Jazeera's broadcasts due to the channel's comments about Bahrain's municipal elections, labelling