Britain Revokes License of Iranian TV Station

The decision to pull the license of the station, Press TV, was made by Ed Richards who was formerly a policy adviser to Tony Blair. He is now Controller of Corporate Strategy at the BBC. He is head of OFCOM(Office of Communications) the body that made the decision that the licence should be denied.
  The official reason for the denial is that the editorial team is based in Tehran and not the UK. For their license to be renewed the entire editorial team must be moved to the UK. Critics of the move have pointed out that CNN, Bloomberg and Al Jazeera all have editorial bosses in other countries, namely the U.S. and Qatar but they are allowed to broadcast in the U.K.
   For some time the U.K. wanted to shut down Press T.V. A UK State Department memo complained: “UK law sets a very high standard for denying licenses to broadcasters.” Given their ability to deprive Press TV for a licence for the reasons given that statement does not seem particularly apt. In fact the U.S. would probably have more trouble than the UK in lifting the license.
   Press TV is funded by the Iranian government and is also monitored by the government. It is not however an official news outlet. The programs in English are very much reflective of a pro-Iranian viewpoint there is no doubt about that. I monitor it quite regularly and it often has interesting material that is not widely covered elsewhere. Press TV will still be available on the Internet so that Britons can view it there as can anyone else. For more see this article and for more about Press TV see here.