MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan ? Blurry picture, broken sound and all, local television is back on the air in northern Afghanistan’s largest city for the first time since the fall of the Taliban nearly five months ago.

From a control room with a mishmash of equipment and a few dust-covered monitors, Balkh TV  named for the province of which Mazar-e-Sharif is the capital  has been sending out a mix of news and music each evening since Sunday. And there’s also a first on the station: women newsreaders.

Since the Taliban banned television as “un-Islamic,” Afghans had to watch TV in secret in their basements using concealed satellite dishes. After Taliban rule ended in the north in November, a brisk trade blossomed in televisions and every kind of video equipment.

Without local stations in Dari, their own language, locals use makeshift satellite dishes from hammered-out sheets of metal  often printed with designs showing they were intended to be cut into cans of everything from whipped cream to bug repellent  to pick up stations from around the world.

Radio broadcasts under the new regime started the day after the Taliban left. However, there was no local television because of a lack of equipment and problems with electricity.

Now, after donations by the U.S. military and the Uzbek government, Balkh TV has several cameras and is getting power from the Uzbek power grid, said Lutfullah Rahofi, broadcasting director at the station.

The first broadcast Sunday began with a recitation from the Quran, the Muslim holy book, followed by an apology for taking so long to resume broadcasting, Rahofi said.

In the control room on Tuesday, Rahofi worked with an engineer on the rundown for that night’s shows  a reading from the Quran followed by news and then music from a popular female Afghan singer.

One music video featured images of a gyrating female in a slim-fitting dress  unthinkable in Taliban times and a stark contrast to the streets of Mazar-e-Sharif, where women still wear their head-to-toe burqas.

So far, the station’s broadcasts aren’t much  starting at 7 p.m. each night and lasting until they run out of material, usually just about four hours, said station manager Jahid, who uses only one name. They only have one tape to record programming for the evening so have to record over it each day  meaning the picture is bound to get fuzzier as time goes by.

Jahid and his employees laugh at the question of whether they have any advertising. Right now, they’re just waiting to receive salaries promised by the government.