“The revolution is in the mini-disk,” says Daoud Kuttab.  Fresh
after web-cred, we’ve got the enormous pleasure of Kuttab, a
Palenstinian journalist and founder of Ammannet
(Jordan), as our Berkman luncheon series speaker today.  He is
talking about running a web- and terrestrial radio operation from
Jordan.  It’s an extraordinary story.  His news operation
covers the Jordanian parliament as well as a range of topics relevant
to Amman, and makes the broadcast available over the radio (possibly FM
soon) as well as internet.

The annual cost of being in business with an FM presence starts with $42,000 for a license, plus
$8,000 to the communications ministry, plus other fees.  He’s got
a full staff of about 15 or 16 people.  The total cost of running
the enterprise is only a few hundred thousand dollars per year.

He’s considering an ammannet blogs server for listeners.  It
sounds as though they are tapping into a tremendous, growing Jordanian
community of internet users.