Country of origin United States No. of seasons 3 Location(s) Washington, D.C. First episode date November 2011 Number of seasons 3 | Original language(s) Persian Executive producer(s) Saman Arbabi Running time 30 minutes Final episode date February 2012 Language Persian | |
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Cast Kambiz Hosseini, Saman Arbabi Presented by Kambiz Hosseini, Saman Arbabi Similar OnTen, Poletik, Orka! Orka!, Googoosh Music Academy, The Daily Show | ||
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Parazit (Persian: پارازیت, pārāzit, meaning "static") was a weekly half-hour Persian-language satirical television show broadcast on Voice of America's Persian service. The show pokes fun at Iranian politics. Kambiz Hosseini and Saman Arbabi, Iranian expatriates living in Washington, DC, started the show as a 10-minute segment in another show influenced by the American satirical news show The Daily Show. Parazit was launched before the June 2009 presidential elections in Iran. It became very popular in Iran, reaching its audience via illegal satellite dishes, the internet, or bootleg DVDs. Its name is a reference to the Iranian government's repeated attempts to jam foreign satellite programming. Because it is distributed through unofficial channels, it is impossible to determine the audience. However, as of January 2011, the show's YouTube channel is viewed 45,000 times a week, while their Facebook page is visited 17 million times a month. A new season was reported to begin on 17 August 2012 after a 6-month hiatus, but did not resume broadcasting.
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The program and its presenters have been subject to significant criticism in Iranian state media, described by some as "character assassination".
Hosseini and Arbabi appeared on The Daily Show on January 20, 2011.