The aim of this paper is to review the background and clarify the role of media cities in contemporary Arab countries. The media city is an economic free zone that Arab countries have been establishing since the 1990s to attract private media companies, particularly broadcasters. This paper focuses on media cities constructed in Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) . The analysis reveals that the purpose of constructing media cities in Arab countries is not only economic, but is highly political as well. Many authoritarian governments use media cities to lessen the threat of the transnational flow of information. At the same time, the media city has played an important role in creating a contemporary Arab broadcasting scene that governments had never expected. With the introduction of media cities, barriers to entering the Arab media market were lowered, allowing many new broadcasters to start to enter the market. Therefore, beyond the original intention of the Arab countries, media cities promote "broadcasting diversity" in the contemporary Arab media scene.