During this time he strongly pushed to include Palestine as a member and attempted to remove the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore from the organization. According to his own account, he was also able to master the English and French languages, and gain experience in diplomacy. He left UNESCO in 1986. Together with partners from Egypt and the Arab world, Qandil co-founded the Eastern Satellite Communications Company in 1987. Its main purpose was to serve broadcasting station that would target Arabic-speaking communities in the Western world and to counter what Qandil perceived as Western bias in global media. However, in 1992, as a result of financial difficulties the company was sold and subsequently became the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC). Qandil worked at MBC for roughly three months until he quit, citing political differences with the station's managers, who considered him a Nasserist. That same year, he was offered to host his own show at Arab Radio and Television (ART), but initially opted to work on a project setting up a private Egyptian station for "Al-Ahram". The station was not launched and Qandil took up a position at ART in 1996 where he hosted his own show called "With Hamdi Qandil". Qandil's arrangements to interview Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on the anniversary of the 1969 coup that brought him to power, and also Tariq Aziz, the vice president of Iraq at the time, aroused controversy among ART's managers. He quit thereafter. In 1998 Qandil responded favorably to the invitation of Safwat El-Sherif, the Information Minister in Hosni Mubarak's government, to return to Egyptian television. In March his program "Ra'is el-Tahrir" ("Editor-in-Chief") began airing. Qandil stated he returned to Egyptian television because he felt he owed "a debt of gratitude to the institution that built my fame when I was in my twenties. Also, working in Egypt is more immediately rewarding than anywhere else." With the relaxation of media restrictions during this period, "Ra'is el-Tahrir" became one of the most popular and respected television programs in Egypt. Describing the relative freedom afforded to the media, Qandil stated in 2001 that the situation was an improvement from when he first began the program, but "as long as there remains a censor, we will continue to ask for more [freedom of expression]." "Ra'is el-Tahrir" was intended to serve as a weekly review of the pan-Arab press, but in practice the program became a medium through which Qandil expressed his opinions on various issues confronting Egypt and the Arab world, views which he claimed were representative of the popular Egyptian sentiment.