mr. conniff, what's your reach? >> guest: well, it depends on how you define reach.ut the arabic-speaking middle east consists of about 300 million people, arabic speakers of all ages. we currently reach with al-hura about 26 million adults weekly, weekly, which is a very comparable number to the weekly number for npr for point of comparison. and sala reaches approximately 12 million people. we have an unduplicated combine of 35 million people watch either of the two radio or listen to the -- watch the tv or listen to the radio weekly. >> host: well, let's talk a little bit about the arab spring and we want to show some video and we're going to show a little bit of video and then we're going to have you talk to this. this is from in the midst of all this demonstration, the police, security apparatus, stormed into our building, came up into our studio while we were on the air, while our anchor was actually broadcasting an interview. and they came in and they were searching apparently for protesters, demonstrators and then they pulled the plug as they -- as they left a

mr. conniff, alhurra and radio sawa were founded during the bush administration during the iraq war. do you find the level of the support from the obama administration to be the same? >> guest: you know, it's essentially been the same. it's not -- to me the support comes from congress. that's where the appropriation comes now. the money has to be requested by the administration. this administration has stayed at the same level of support as the prior one. there's been no real difference. historically, international broadcasting has not been influenced by partisan politics, to our collective advantage. we would like to have president obama come on our air. i don't think he's holding it against us. he has not been on the other organizations either. we had valerie jared on, and we had people in the white house come on, and state department is on all the time. we