Saad Mohseni

Mohseni was born on 23 April 1966 in London, United Kingdom, where his father, Yassin Mohseni, was serving as an Afghan diplomat. Yassin Mohseni served in Kabul, Washington, DC, London, and Tokyo during his 25-year career.

After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Yassin Mohseni, then serving in Tokyo, resigned from the diplomatic corps and sought asylum. The family relocated to Australia in 1982.[1] Mohseni has two younger brothers, Zaid and Jahid Mohseni, and younger sister Wajma.

Mohseni began his banking career as an apprentice at an Australian funds management entity, and later became a commodities and derivatives trader in Melbourne, Sydney, and London, culminating in the management of a trading desk of an Australian investment bank.

After the removal of the Taliban government in late 2001, Mohseni and his brothers returned to Afghanistan to participate in the country's reconstruction and launch MOBY Group. They entered the media arena in 2003 by establishing Arman FM, the country's first privately owned radio station. Arman played Western and Afghan pop music, which was groundbreaking after years of Taliban rule, in which all music, television, and independent news had been banned.[1] In 2004, MOBY Group launched TOLO TV, which airs international soap operas, The Voice Afghanistan, Afghan Star, and locally produced dramas. In addition to TOLO TV, MOBY also owns TOLOnews and Lemar TV, a Pashto-language channel. MOBY channels are viewed by over 60 percent of Afghans.[2]

In 2009, MOBY launched Farsi1, a general-entertainment satellite channel targeting Persian speakers in the Middle East and West Asia.[3] In 2014, MOBY launched LANA TV in Iraq, the first satellite channel to dub shows into the local Iraqi dialect.[4] MOBY Group now owns 17 businesses operating in seven markets across South and Central Asia and the Middle East, spanning television, radio, production, strategic communications, and digital platforms.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Saad Mohseni.

• Charlie Rose "Saad Mohseni; Rick Levin; the Confidence Code; A Look at the Afghan Elections" (April 2014)
• Al Jazeera English: Afghanistan's first 24/7 TV channel (8 July 2010)
• Rachel Maddow: Media as another Front - Saad Mohseni (7 July 2010)
• Reuters: Afghanistan gets first 24-hour news TV (6 July 2010)
• Morning Joe (Ken Auletta discussing the Moby Group) (29 June 2010)
• The New Yorker Profile: Saad Mohseni, Afghanistan's first media mogul (29 June 2010)
• Rachel Maddow Show "Saad Mohseni on MSNBCs Rachel Maddow" (18 March 2010)
• On The Media "Saad Mohseni on NPR's On the Media" (5 March 2010)"
• MSNBC " Saad Mohseni on MSNBC’s Morning Joe" (16 June 2009)
• The Daily Show " Saad Mohseni speaks to Jon Stewart on the Daily Show" (10 June 2009)
• Charlie Rose "A Conversation with Saad Mohseni" (January 2008)
• NPR "Afghan TV Station to Fight Soap Opera Ban" (April 2008)
• NPR "Emerging Afghan Media Triggering Change" (September 2007)
• Marketplace/Public Radio "Radical Change on Afghanistan’s Airwaves" (October 2006)
• ABC Television "Afghan TV" (November 2006)
• SBS Television "Revolutionary TV (August 2005)
• Washington Post "David Ignatius: What Afghans Want" (December 2008)
• Washington Post "Reaching his Prime Time in Afghanistan" (September 2007)
• New York Times "Amid War, Passion for TV Chefs, Soaps and Idols" (August 2007)
• Time Magazine "Capitalism Comes to Afghanistan" (December 2006)
• Fortune " Cobbling a Media Empire in Kabul" (January 2006)
• Saad Mohseni at IMDb