Algeria has had television broadcasting since the mid-1950s, specifically on 24 December 1956, when the television station in Algiers was established by the French colonial authorities, who had realised the importance of television imagery in polishing their image in the eyes of international public opinion by broadcasting programmes on the situation in Algeria from a French perspective. It also included news programmes about France and the various political, economic, cultural and sporting activities taking place there. With the establishment of a television station in Algeria by colonial France in 1956, this marked the first television broadcast in the country...

When colonial France established a television broadcasting station in Algeria in 1956, this marked the first television broadcast in the Arab world, alongside Iraq, which also introduced television that same year—some 11 years after news programmes were first broadcast in France on 24 March 1945.

During the colonial era, television in Algeria was largely the preserve of the French colonists and their collaborators; programmes were broadcast via a transmitter station located at Ras Tamentfout (‘Matifou’), 20 kilometres from the city of Algiers. The transmitter’s power was initially estimated at 3 kW, rising to 20 kW in 1957. It could only be viewed in Algiers and its immediate suburbs, with broadcasts totalling no more than 31 hours a week in both Arabic and French.

French statistics indicate that by 1960, the number of television sets in Algeria had doubled among the French and European colonists compared to the number owned by Algerians.

During the colonial era, France produced more than 200 television films in the Maghreb, none of which were in keeping with social traditions; consequently, faced with this distorted media, Algerians had no choice but to resort to a policy of isolation and withdrawal into themselves, so that colonialism could find no way to undermine their national identity.