The first experiments with television broadcasting were made in Czechoslovakia by Jaroslav Safránek in the period before World War II, on an amateur basis. After the war, television broadcasting was shown to the Czechoslovak public at the 1948 International Radio Exhibition. Public television broadcasting began in Prague on May 1, 1953, within the framework of state-owned Czechoslovak Radio. In subsequent years, television broadcasting was extended throughout Czechoslovakia, and the country had nationwide television broadcasting from 1958 onward. Nevertheless, the impact of television was considerably smaller than that of radio, since only about half of the households owned a TV set still in the 1960s. In 1957–58 state-run Czechoslovak Television was instituted as an entity separate from Czechoslovak Radio. State- owned Czechoslovak Television enjoyed a broadcasting monopoly, confirmed by Czechoslovak Law No. 18/1964.

In the early years of its existence, Czechoslovak Television did not broadcast its own television news; at 7:00 P.M., the main evening radio news was transmitted while the television picture showed a test card. From October 1, 1956, the occasional current-affairs program Televizní aktuality a zajímavosti (Topical Newsitems) was broadcast daily. On January 1, 1958, nightly Televizní noviny (Television News) went on the air at 7:00 P.M. The programming schedule was set thus: after the main evening news at 7:00 P.M., a documentary was usually shown at 7:30, and a feature film followed at 8:00. Czechoslovak Television advertised itself as “Your Small Cinema at Home.”

From the mid-1960s, the communist regime in Czechoslovakia found itself on the defensive. Reformers within the system, mostly writers, artists, and intellectuals, initiated a sustained push for freedom, using contemporary literature and culture as an instrument of democratization. From the mid-1960s, Czechoslovak Television, at least in certain areas of its broadcasting, freed itself of strict ideological censorship, especially in entertainment, where it broadcast its own popular drama (Jaroslav Dietl), and, partially, also in the area of current affairs. Thus, for instance, on April 22, 1966, Czechoslovak Television aired a special program, Spor (Argument), in which an “indictment,” drafted by members of the younger generation criticizing the older generation and their Stalinist activism of the early 1950s, was debated. Although the program could not openly discuss the crimes committed by the ruling Communist Party in the 1950s, the broadcasting of Spor was interpreted by the Czechoslovak public as a signal that democratic debate was now possible. The program produced a large response from viewers. However, a follow-up debate, titled Porota (The Jury), made a few months later, which openly criticized Communist Party policy, was banned by the government and could not be broadcast until the period of the Prague Spring, in March 1968.

The campaign for democratic reform culminated in the Prague Spring, a period that lasted from March until August 1968, when Czechoslovakia enjoyed an almost absolute freedom of expression and engaged in an intensive debate about the totalitarian excesses of its immediate past and the alternatives for its political future. This was a remarkable period in the history of the Czech media: newspapers, radio, and television provided professional and highly sophisticated coverage of the issues under debate. A number of leading broadcasters emerged as figures of national importance. Czechoslovak Television, under its then-director JiˇríPelikán, a reformist communist, played a significant role in this period.

Equally remarkable was the work of the Czechoslovak media during the first week of Soviet occupation following the Warsaw Pact military invasion of August 21, 1968, which put an end to the Prague Spring. From the early hours of the invasion, the media went underground, defying the invading forces and provided a round-the-clock, independent news service, calling for sensible, peaceful resistance and preventing chaos and bloodshed. While Czechoslovak television attempted to broadcast in certain regions during the invasion, sometimes directly from television transmitters, the occupying armies mostly managed to silence those broadcasts. It was the voice of “Free Czechoslovak Radio” that the invading armies failed to silence and that became the focus of national resistance.

There was a postinvasion “interregnum” after August 1968 because the occupying authorities did not manage to bring Czechoslovakia fully to heel until the spring of 1970. In spite of a certain amount of censorship (it was not possible to mention the invasion or to criticize the Soviet Union), Czechoslovak Television remained a strong voice of freedom throughout the autumn of 1968, in both its political and entertainment programming, and it again played a major role during the crisis of January 1969, when Jan Palach, a Prague university student, immolated himself in protest against the Warsaw Pact invasion and when about a million people attended his funeral.

The Soviet Union threw the country into a harsh, neo-Stalinist mode within a couple of years after the invasion and instigated a direct assault on the Czechoslovak intelligentsia. The media were purged of all the reformists and turned into a machine that produced emotional, ideological propaganda, the intensity of which remained practically unchanged until the fall of communism in 1989. Political purges took place in Czechoslovakia from 1969 through 1971, and some three quarters of a million supporters of democratic reform were sacked from their jobs.

Most professional journalists had to leave Czechoslovak Television and were replaced by ideological zealots who were at first so unprofessional that for a period of time after the purges, the new presenters of the evening news were incapable of broadcasting live and the news bulletin had to be prerecorded earlier in the day. In the mid-1970s, the Communist Party ordered Czechoslovak Television to move its evening news from 7:00 to 7:30 P.M. in order to increase its viewing figures (which peaked at about 8:00 P.M. when the feature film of the night started). This strategy also allowed them to compete with the evening news on Austrian Television, which was broadcast at 7:30 and which people in the border areas in Czechoslovakia watched in large numbers, as an antidote to communist propaganda.

In the 1970s, there were ties between Czechoslovak Television’s News and Current Affairs Department and the Czechoslovak secret police (STB). Czechoslovak Television occasionally broadcast programs, based on secret police material, that scandalized the banned democratic reformers and human rights activists. Czechoslovak Television also transmitted popular, consumerist entertainment in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Second Program of Czechoslovak Television began broadcasting on May 10, 1970; from May 9, 1973, the Second Program broadcast in color. The First Program started broadcasting in color on May 9, 1975. From 1983 onward, Czechoslovakia showed the first program of Russian television for the occupying Soviet troops. In the late 1980s, when reform began in the Soviet Union, Russian television broadcast many programs that questioned the authoritarian communist establishment. The occupation regime in Czechoslovakia would have never allowed such programs on its own indigenous TV channels (many Czechs understand Russian since the two Slavic languages are related). Thus, paradoxically, Russian television broadcasts became a voice of freedom in Czechoslovakia in the late 1980s.

A fter the fall of communism, state-owned Czechoslovak Television was turned into a public service system. From 1992 there was a federal, Czechoslovak channel and separate Czech and Slovak television stations. In May 1990, the Soviet TV channel in Czechoslovakia was temporarily turned into an “open channel,” OK3, which broadcast a selection of international satellite programming until the end of 1992. After the division of Czechoslovakia in 1993 into CzechRepublic and Slovakia, Czech Television retained two nationwide terrestrial channels: the mainstream program C T 1 and the cultural program C T 2. In Slovakia, Slovak Television also retained two nationwide terrestrial channels: STV 1 and STV 2.

Attempts have been made since the fall of communism to turn the former Czechoslovak Television into a public service station, but they have not been on the whole successful. During the semi authoritarian government of Vladimír Mecˇiar and his Movement for Democratic Slovakia, Slovak public service television sided with the government, producing propaganda for them.

From 1993 to 1998, Czech Television’s chief executive, Ivo Mathé, continued to place emphasis on entertainment. News and current affairs remained relatively undeveloped. In the first half of the 1990s, Czech Television reporters and interviewers also often sided with the government. In the wake of Mathé’s departure, several attempts have been made since 1998 to professionalize Czech TV, in particular its news and current-affairs department, and to open up its finances to public scrutiny. Between 1998 and 2001, Czech Television had four different chief executives.

A fourth attempt at reform failed spectacularly in December 2000 and January 2001, when the Council for Czech Television, a regulatory body, appointed a former BBC journalist, Jirˇí Hodacˇ, as Czech Television’s chief executive. This appointment resulted in a rebellion by Czech TV employees, led by the news and current-affairs department, whose members turned an internal labor dispute into a public political struggle.

In December 2000, upon learning of Hodacˇ’s appointment, the TV rebels began to transmit emotional broadcasts, hijacking the output of the station for their own ends. Defending their working practices, they aligned themselves with an opposition political party (the Freedom Union) and used popular discontent with the government to urge some 80,000 people to demonstrate in the streets of Prague against an alleged government attempt to stifle the independence of Czech TV. The new chief executive was deposed within a matter of days. The Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting characterized the Czech TV rebellion as “probably the most serious crisis since the fall of communism in 1989” and imposed the highest possible fine (2 million Czech crowns) on Czech TV for the behavior of its employees during the TV rebellion.

A number of well-known Prague cultural figures supported the Czech TV rebellion, fearing with some justification that the opening of the finances of Czech Television might compromise the often informal, subcontractors’ infrastructure on which many filmmakers and other cultural workers were financially dependent. They feared that the role of Czech Television as the only major surviving source of cultural subsidy supporting the work of Prague artists and intellectuals might be threatened.

In 1993 the regulatory authority, the Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting, awarded a free television license for a commercial, culturally oriented nationwide terrestrial television station to CET 21. This company was a consortium of six Czech and Slovak individuals, headed by Vladimír Zelezny,and Ronald Lauder’s American company Central European Development Corporation, which later became Central European Media Enterprises (CME). The new commercial television station, Nova TV, operated by Ceská nezávislá televizní spolecnost (CNTS, Czech Independent Television Company), began broadcasting on February 4, 1994. From its inception, it dropped the cultural remit and went aggresively for downmarket, tabloid broadcasting, including pornography. The station was financially very successful. According to estimates, in the first years of its existence it was watched by some 70 percent of the Czech audiences. In the third year of its broadcasting, Nova TV recorded an operational profit of $45 million (U.S.) on the basis of a turnover of $109 million (U.S.). In 1995 a dividend of $12 million (U.S.) was paid out by the TV company. Vladimír Zelezny ́, chief executive of Nova Television, used his TV station for the support of his own political and business interests, in particular in his weekly program Volejte ˇrediteli (Call the Director), broadcast on Saturdays at lunchtime. He often lambasted his political and business opponents, providing no opportunity for them to respond.

The American company CME bought out the participation interest in CNTS from the original Czech and Slovak founders of the station, achieving 99 percent ownership. At the same time, CME made it possible for Vladimír Zelezny ́ to acquire a 60 percent majority in CET 21, the license holder, hoping that he would always represent CME’s interests. But from 1998, Zelezny ́ began secretly to act against the interests of CME, and in April 1999, he was fired from the post of chief executive of CNTS. Zelezny ́ then found indigenous financial backers in the Czech Republic, and in August 1999, he took the American-backed Nova TV (CNTS) off the air, replacing it with his own Nova TV Mark 2 with funds that are still characterized by mysterious origins. CME sued Zelezny ́ and the Czech Republic at the international chamber of commerce in Amsterdam and the Czech side lost. Zelezny ́ is to repay CME $28 million, and the Czech Republic is to pay CME $500 million in damages. Information about the ultimate owners of Nova TV is not available: their identities are covered by a number of front organizations. In June 2002, CET 21, the company controlling Nova Television, attempted to sack Vladimír Zelezny ́ from the post of chief executive of Nova TV for alleged financial irregularities.

Another commercial TV broadcaster in the Czech Republic, TV Prima (on air in its present form from January 1997), apparently has close ties with the CET 21 television empire and takes over some of its programming. TV Prima developed from a regional broadcaster and was temporarily owned by the Czech Investment and Postal Bank (IPB). This bank had succumbed to corruption and had to be renationalized by the Czech government. The true identity of the owners of the station is not known, but in spring 2001, problems arose between the bank, which now controls IPB, and Domeana, the firm that represents the current owners of TV Prima.

In Slovakia, the U.S. company Central European Media Enterprises launched Markíza TV (Marchioness TV) as a nationwide television station on August 31, 1996, using the model of Czech Nova TV. Markíza TV immediately made significant inroads in the viewing figures of public service Slovak Television. CME owns an 80 percent noncontrolling economic interest and a 49 percent voting interest in Slovenská Televizná Spolocˇ nost’ (STS, Slovak Television Company), which operates Markíza TV. The Slovak director of Markíza TV, Pavol Rusko, openly uses the TV station for his own political and business ends, having founded his own political party, Ano (“Yes”), which is supported by Markíza TV. A number of Rusko’s collaborators held posts also in the public service Slovak Television in 2002, which assumed a hostile attitude toward the current right-of-center Slovak government coalition. On March 2, 2002, the Czech company CET 21, then still headed by Vladimír Zelezny ́, launched Joj TV in Slovakia. Joj TV has been mostly transmitting Nova TV repeats, and its viewing figures were only some 7 percent throughout the spring of 2002.