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One "force" the Iranian Government won't take on

We all know that the outcome of last year's so-called election in Iran precipitated widespread demonstrations, even resulting in deaths. The Government continues to crack down, strongly, on those who seemingly openly challenge the Government.

But there is one "force" which the Government would not be able to curb - if it even dared to do so. It's a TV program so popular that to try and somehow censor it would lead to a real, and widespread, "revolution." The Daily Beast explains in "Murdoch's Iranian Invasion":

"Farsi1, a Persian language satellite station partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, has become the most popular entertainment network in Iran, with nearly half of the country’s population (some 35 million people) tuning in daily to keep up with dubbed episodes of Fox favorites like 24 and How I Met Your Mother.

However, the real draw of the network is its dubbed versions of Latin American Telenovelas, which have most of the country in their melodramatic grip. One Telenovela in particular, Second Chance, has become such a national obsession in Iran that it has inspired a hairstyle for women called “the Isabel,” named after the show's heroine.

Although satellite dishes are technically forbidden in Iran, practically every home in the country has a shiny white disk perched on its rooftop. Ali Darabi, the deputy head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) estimates that approximately 40 percent of Iranians have illegal satellites, but the number is probably much higher than the government wants to admit.

Occasionally the authorities make sweeps of certain neighborhoods, collecting the dishes and fining their owners. But after a few days the dishes pop back up again, usually sold back to their owners by the same authorities that confiscated them.
The truth is that the Iranian government is fairly blasé about the satellite dishes, perhaps recognizing that it may be able to get away with denying basic rights and freedoms to its citizens, but if it tried to take away their right to find out what happened to Victoria (the title character of one of Iran’s most popular Telenovelas) after her husband left her for a younger woman… well, that’s enough to stir up a revolution."

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