ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - In the middle of the war between Iran and the US, in which the Kurdistan Region was caught in the crossfire, across a balcony in Sulaimani, a video showed several windows from the adjacent residential building with a purple hue. The buildings did not come with built-in purple lights; it was all screens on AVA Media.

The channel has become the pioneer Kurdish media outlet in less than two years, having been launched in September 2024, and has grown into the most-watched channel amongst the Kurdish-speaking audience.

Statistics seen by The New Region showed the channel leading over its closest competitors by at least double the viewer percentage, all while polls over the past year have seen AVA voted through random polling as the most watched TV channel in the Kurdistan Region. Most recent polls show nearly one out of two people in the Kurdistan Region relies on AVA as their source of news.

Such an observation was also made in over a month of US-Iran war coverage, where the channel's YouTube live stream had double and, at times, triple the amount of live viewers.

“In their coverage over the past weeks, AVA used the highest amount of reliable sources,” media academic Bahat Qaradaghi told The New Region, highlighting that the channel had not only just relied on trusted sources of information but also made use of “the channel’s reporters on the ground in Baghdad, Kirkuk, and many areas of the Kurdistan Region.”

Qaradaghi hailed the channel’s coverage as unbiased, saying that the channel was covering both sides of the war equally across its 24-hour broadcast.

But that isn’t all; the channel has gained itself quite some awards and honors over the past year.

AVA Media’s prime news hour won the Shorty Impact Award in November

The award was given to the 7:00 pm primetime news hour hosted by renowned Kurdish anchor Hawraz Gulpi and, specifically, a segment of the hour where he addresses people’s concerns sent to the channel on a daily basis.

“One of the reasons why we have gained people's trust is the way we deliver news, we don't just read news, we narrate stories, and people love that,” Gulpi told The New Region on Friday.

As of 2025, over 130,000 citizens have directly benefited from the cases resolved and over 500 million dollars worth of financial issues have been resolved through the show.

Gulpi’s news hour has set records time and again for being the most viewed.

The New Region spoke to five random social media followers of AVA Media to gauge viewers' opinions of the outlet's content.

“I like how simple the news is made; they introduced this to Kurdish news,” one follower said, while another called it “a channel that serves people.”

The channel has, on numerous occasions, served as a platform to deliver help to people in need, while also at times holding mass events for the youth.