Abstract
The Presidency of Religious Affairs began producing television broadcasts / having them produced in 1987. With the emergence of commercial televisions in the 1990s, the Presidency of Religious Affairs officially voiced its request for doing independent television broadcasting with the exclusive authority to decide on its organization, technical details, broadcast content, planning, and inspection. This study, therefore, focuses on religion-themed programs within the framework of public service. This study deals with the history of, and discussions about, the religion-themed programs broadcast on the Turkish public service broadcaster TRT, as well as the broadcast contents and the types of programs on Diyanet TV, the establishment of which has marked a new era in public service broadcasting. The research question of this study, therefore, is centered around the types of programs on Diyanet TV from the perspective of public service broadcasting. Accordingly, the target domain of this study is the programs broadcast on Diyanet TV. The scope of the study covers the first 6 months of 2019 and the programs broadcast after 1 July 2019 are not included in this study. The systematic random sampling is used to select and analyze programs between 15-31 January 2019, 15-31 March 2019, and 15- 30 June 2019 in the study population. These programs were examined with reference to the “Codes, Definitions, and Categorizations of Programmes Broadcast” issued by the Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council, and the descriptive analysis was conducted to determine how Diyanet TV classified its programs.