As you may know, OIRT's Intervision was Eastern Europe's equivalent of the EBU's Eurovision television exchange. Here are various slides used by Eastern European broadcasters for their Intervision transmissions:
However, Yugoslavia was not a part of the Soviet Bloc, despite being communist, so JRT (the umbrella organization of Yugoslavia's various broadcasters) was an EBU member:
Thanks, DocumentaryFan. I remember Yugoslavia regularly taking part in the Eurovision Song Contest, and of course winning it in 1989.
How was Yugoslavian television organised in the 70s and 80s (number of channels, broadcasting hours, different languages and regions)? What kind of foreign programming did they show from Eastern and Western countries? Was dubbing or subtitling the preferred method of localisation?
Thanks, DocumentaryFan. I remember Yugoslavia regularly taking part in the Eurovision Song Contest, and of course winning it in 1989.
How was Yugoslavian television organised in the 70s and 80s (number of channels, broadcasting hours, different languages and regions)? What kind of foreign programming did they show from Eastern and Western countries? Was dubbing or subtitling the preferred method of localisation?
In Yugoslavia, each of the six republics and both autonomous provinces had their own broadcasting organizations. The broadcasters from the Serbo-Croatian-speaking republics (Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro) operated a more-or-less joint television network -- a bit like ARD's Das Erste in Germany --, but with their own evening news since the late 1960s.
TV Ljubljana in Slovenia and TV Skopje in Macedonia were far more independent and had their own separate TV services because of the language issue -- the Slovenian and the Macedonian languages are different from Serbo-Croatian. They were members of JRT, but they did not carry the full "JRT network". Instead, they only aired occasional programs from the other Yugoslav broadcasters, often subtitled.
All of the broadcasters above operated at least two channels. Some began to operate third channels in the late 1980s, but those were mostly experimental, staffed largely by enthusiastic young people, and with limited reach.
In addition, three broadcasting organizations aired TV services intended primarily for minorities: TV Novi Sad in the Serbian province of Vojvodina broadcast mostly in Hungarian and in the other minority languages of that province, TV Pristina in the Serbian province of Kosovo broadcast mostly in Albanian, while TV Koper, based in Slovenia near the Yugoslav-Italian border, broadcast mostly in Italian.
In addition to covering Croatia, TV Zagreb's first channel was also redistributed in Slovenia for Serbo-Croatian speakers who lived in Slovenia but who did not understand Slovenian-language television (members of the military, for instance). It also gave viewers an extra choice.
Only TV Belgrade had a morning show and only since the late 1980s. It was a regional program -- for Serbia only -- and was not carried by the rest of the JRT network. The other broadcasters went on the air at around 9 A.M. with educational programming and cartoons. In the afternoons, they would show old movies, often American, and repeats. (Before the late 1980s, they would cease broadcasting for a few hours every afternoon.) The prime time lineup was varied -- it ranged from political discussions and films to foreign series and sports roundups.
In the 1980s, a late-night, "commercial" bloc of programming was introduced, It went on the air after the late news (at around 10:30 or 11:00 P.M.) and consisted of popular imported programming -- Alf, Only Fools and Horses, Garfield cartoons, Die Schwarzwaldklinik, etc. This bloc resembled Western commercial television in concept and approach -- it was full off slick commercials and it even had MTV-style graphics between programs. The various JRT broadcasters took turns in producing this bloc, but TV Ljubljana, again, had its own version because of the language situation -- it used Slovenian rather than Serbo-Croatian subtitles.
Speaking of which, all foreign programming in Yugoslavia was subtitled. The exception was programming for younger children, which was usually dubbed. (That is still the case in all the countries that emerged from Yugoslavia.) It is said that Jim Henson liked the Slovenian-language version of Fraggle Rock more than any other foreign version.
Yugoslavia always imported programming from the West. Peyton Place, for example, was hugely popular in the 1970s, while everything from Dynasty to Miami Vice was shown in the 1980s. Some of these series arrived in Yugoslavia after a delay because the broadcasters didn't want to spend too much hard currency -- but not because of any ideological reasons (although the authorities didn't like Peyton Place). If Yugoslav TV was late in acquiring some popular series, many viewers in Slovenia and Croatia would simply watch it on Austrian or Italian television, which could be seen in large parts of those republics.
Imports from the Eastern Bloc were not as common. They consisted mostly of films and cartoons (mostly Czech, Polish, and Hungarian).
Thanks again! That's what I find great about forums like this: I never knew anything about Yugoslav television but once you start to think about it, there's so many interesting things and questions that Wikipedia can't answer.
Looks like TV audiences had quite a lot to choose from in Yugoslavia. Can you remember some more British and German programmes that were imported? Did the channels broadcast in PAL or SECAM?
I'm a little surprised that Italian TV was widely available in Slovenia/Croatia. Did this only spill over from transmitters along the land border, or did it also come from across the Adriatic Sea? Did people set up huge aerials, like in the GDR?
My pleasure, KarlHyde! Yugoslavia used the PAL standard and was pretty well-integrated into the Western European television system. Not only did some Yugoslav transmitters redistribute Italian TV live in the 1960s, but TV Koper eventually became a major television player in Italy. (You can read more about that HERE).
Imported German programs included primarily miniseries and TV-movies, while imports from the UK included a larger number of sitcoms and documentary series (such as The Ascent of Man and Survivor).
Both Italian and Austrian television were available in large parts of Slovenia and Croatia. In Slovenia, they spilled over the land borders, while in coastal Croatia, people would pick them up from across the Adriatic. Even parts of Montenegro, way to the south, could pick up Italian TV!
Large aerials were rare, primarily because the terrain is so mountainous. People in areas that were in range of the signals didn't need special antennas, while people that were in "shadows" of mountains couldn't receive anything even with large antennas.
MDR Fernsehen (FTA on Astra 19.2°E) shows a cult classic from the GDR, tonight at 21:55 BST: Heisser Sommer (Hot Summer), a 1967 schlager/musical film with a strangely fascinating atmosphere...
20 minutes of rare footage with everyday life and traffic scenes: on the ferry, Autobahn travel, a stop at the motorway restaurant and petrol station, etc.
Incidentally, the policeman who is interviewed at 6:09 is Rolf-Dieter Saternus; he hosted "Verkehrsmagazin" (traffic magazine) on GDR television.
It's only three weeks until the 9th of November, which marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Public German TV channels will be full of documentaries in the next few weeks, especially MDR and RBB, which are the regional channels for the eastern part of Germany. And there are some daily programmes with lots of archive footage from the GDR:
Chronik der Wende [chronicle of the turnaround] on RBB at 07:15 CET (07:05 on Sundays)
Produced in the 90s, this is a 163-part series featuring interviews and clips from Eastern and Western news bulletins about the political events of each particular day in the GDR. It started on 7th October (40th anniversary of the GDR) and will run until 18th March (first democratic elections). This is hugely interesting, especially when you understand some German. http://mediathek.rbb-online.de/suche?s=Chronik+der+Wende
Berliner Abendschau vor 25 Jahren on RBB, almost every night, somwhere between 01:00 and 05:00 CET
This is a full repeat of the programme from 25 years ago. Abendschau was the main local news bulletin from West Berlin. In early October 1989, there were still a lot of unspectacular reports in that programme but this is going to change radically during the next few weeks. http://mediathek.rbb-online.de/suche?s=berliner+abendschau
Tagesschau vor 25 Jahren on ARD Alpha, every night around 23:45 CET
This is the main West German national news bulletin. Apparently it's not available online.
Some important dates:
On 18th October 1989, the SED Politbüro forced Erich Honecker to resign and appointed Erich Krenz to be his successor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbI_8YfFjf0
A great thread this and deserves a revive. Thanks to Karl and DocumentaryFan for all their work. Now I thought it was in this thread that there was a few links to the evening news programmes on the various old Yugoslav regions ( Slovenia, Croatia etc ) but i cannot find it.
Go back a couple of pages on here and you may see links to Slovenian Only Fools and Horses ( although i cannot vouch if the links still work )
Thanks, I'll give it a try
Slightly off theme but when I was in Belgrade once my attention was drawn to a programme that never appeared in any schedules but consisted of fairly hard porn and went out on channel 3 on Friday nights about midnight !
Slightly off theme but when I was in Belgrade once my attention was drawn to a programme that never appeared in any schedules but consisted of fairly hard porn and went out on channel 3 on Friday nights about midnight !
Sounds like it was a pirate station that went on air after the nightly shutdown of the state broadcaster? ;-)
Sounds like it was a pirate station that went on air after the nightly shutdown of the state broadcaster? ;-)
No it was the state broadcaster because it was someone who worked for the state broadcaster that drew it to my attention - he ran the VTs ! Apparently everyone knew about it but something innocuous actually appeared in the schedule.
I was in West Germany at the time of the Tiananmen Sqare riots. Our hotel TV had a wide range of West German and European channels including those from the GDR. Apart from the GDR channels, every broadcaster's news lead with the riots including graphic pictures.
The GDR news lead with Eric Honecker visiting a tractor factory, you couldn't make this up could you? The second item was about the riots but only showed "brave" injured Chinese soldiers in hospital all of whom seemed to have a blob of ketchup on their heads from one of those tomato shaped squeezy bottles.
I was in West Germany at the time of the Tiananmen Sqare riots. Our hotel TV had a wide range of West German and European channels including those from the GDR. Apart from the GDR channels, every broadcaster's news lead with the riots including graphic pictures.
The GDR news lead with Eric Honecker visiting a tractor factory, you couldn't make this up could you? The second item was about the riots but only showed "brave" injured Chinese soldiers in hospital all of whom seemed to have a blob of ketchup on their heads from one of those tomato shaped squeezy bottles.
Yes, it was bizarre. I remember the GDR correspondent commentating via telephone, using only official footage from Chinese state television.
This is the main GDR news bulletin from 3rd June 1989, when the riots on Tiananmen Square were already in full swing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqg7NeuUsW4
There was only a short announcement about Beijing (starting at 10:11), saying that "an extreme minority of people had blocked road junctions and held up army troops".
The same Youtube channel has more Aktuelle Kamera bulletins from April, May, and early June of 1989 but those from 4th June and beyond haven't been uploaded yet.
The bulletin from 7th May 1989 is interesting as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP0qR8oMpZ8
On this day, municipal elections were held in the GDR. In retrospect, this was a crucial turning point because civil rights activists were monitoring the counting of ballots, and they could prove that there were more "No" votes than officially proclaimed. It was the first time that some citizens publicly denounced the electoral fraud.
In the news bulletin itself, there were no results or projections. Instead, politicians and ordinary people were shown, casting their votes, and saying that everything was great in the GDR. This went on for 22 (!) minutes.
The official result (more than 98% "Yes" votes) was proclaimed later in the evening by Egon Krenz, who would become Honecker's successor as state and party leader in October.
Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlEqCkf-hKw
However, Yugoslavia was not a part of the Soviet Bloc, despite being communist, so JRT (the umbrella organization of Yugoslavia's various broadcasters) was an EBU member:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6uu95de46o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A0ChGwsDuM
How was Yugoslavian television organised in the 70s and 80s (number of channels, broadcasting hours, different languages and regions)? What kind of foreign programming did they show from Eastern and Western countries? Was dubbing or subtitling the preferred method of localisation?
By the way, here's an East German commercial for an electric shaver.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irwf52DYYvg
Thanks. Went to Krakow a few years ago, stunning city
http://youtu.be/Vtr4c7Ga0jc
In Yugoslavia, each of the six republics and both autonomous provinces had their own broadcasting organizations. The broadcasters from the Serbo-Croatian-speaking republics (Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro) operated a more-or-less joint television network -- a bit like ARD's Das Erste in Germany --, but with their own evening news since the late 1960s.
TV Ljubljana in Slovenia and TV Skopje in Macedonia were far more independent and had their own separate TV services because of the language issue -- the Slovenian and the Macedonian languages are different from Serbo-Croatian. They were members of JRT, but they did not carry the full "JRT network". Instead, they only aired occasional programs from the other Yugoslav broadcasters, often subtitled.
All of the broadcasters above operated at least two channels. Some began to operate third channels in the late 1980s, but those were mostly experimental, staffed largely by enthusiastic young people, and with limited reach.
In addition, three broadcasting organizations aired TV services intended primarily for minorities: TV Novi Sad in the Serbian province of Vojvodina broadcast mostly in Hungarian and in the other minority languages of that province, TV Pristina in the Serbian province of Kosovo broadcast mostly in Albanian, while TV Koper, based in Slovenia near the Yugoslav-Italian border, broadcast mostly in Italian.
In addition to covering Croatia, TV Zagreb's first channel was also redistributed in Slovenia for Serbo-Croatian speakers who lived in Slovenia but who did not understand Slovenian-language television (members of the military, for instance). It also gave viewers an extra choice.
Only TV Belgrade had a morning show and only since the late 1980s. It was a regional program -- for Serbia only -- and was not carried by the rest of the JRT network. The other broadcasters went on the air at around 9 A.M. with educational programming and cartoons. In the afternoons, they would show old movies, often American, and repeats. (Before the late 1980s, they would cease broadcasting for a few hours every afternoon.) The prime time lineup was varied -- it ranged from political discussions and films to foreign series and sports roundups.
In the 1980s, a late-night, "commercial" bloc of programming was introduced, It went on the air after the late news (at around 10:30 or 11:00 P.M.) and consisted of popular imported programming -- Alf, Only Fools and Horses, Garfield cartoons, Die Schwarzwaldklinik, etc. This bloc resembled Western commercial television in concept and approach -- it was full off slick commercials and it even had MTV-style graphics between programs. The various JRT broadcasters took turns in producing this bloc, but TV Ljubljana, again, had its own version because of the language situation -- it used Slovenian rather than Serbo-Croatian subtitles.
Speaking of which, all foreign programming in Yugoslavia was subtitled. The exception was programming for younger children, which was usually dubbed. (That is still the case in all the countries that emerged from Yugoslavia.) It is said that Jim Henson liked the Slovenian-language version of Fraggle Rock more than any other foreign version.
Yugoslavia always imported programming from the West. Peyton Place, for example, was hugely popular in the 1970s, while everything from Dynasty to Miami Vice was shown in the 1980s. Some of these series arrived in Yugoslavia after a delay because the broadcasters didn't want to spend too much hard currency -- but not because of any ideological reasons (although the authorities didn't like Peyton Place). If Yugoslav TV was late in acquiring some popular series, many viewers in Slovenia and Croatia would simply watch it on Austrian or Italian television, which could be seen in large parts of those republics.
Imports from the Eastern Bloc were not as common. They consisted mostly of films and cartoons (mostly Czech, Polish, and Hungarian).
Looks like TV audiences had quite a lot to choose from in Yugoslavia. Can you remember some more British and German programmes that were imported? Did the channels broadcast in PAL or SECAM?
I'm a little surprised that Italian TV was widely available in Slovenia/Croatia. Did this only spill over from transmitters along the land border, or did it also come from across the Adriatic Sea? Did people set up huge aerials, like in the GDR?
Imported German programs included primarily miniseries and TV-movies, while imports from the UK included a larger number of sitcoms and documentary series (such as The Ascent of Man and Survivor).
Both Italian and Austrian television were available in large parts of Slovenia and Croatia. In Slovenia, they spilled over the land borders, while in coastal Croatia, people would pick them up from across the Adriatic. Even parts of Montenegro, way to the south, could pick up Italian TV!
Large aerials were rare, primarily because the terrain is so mountainous. People in areas that were in range of the signals didn't need special antennas, while people that were in "shadows" of mountains couldn't receive anything even with large antennas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu0Z3MJ5P3E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn-uTpNqNHc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWuQz4JQyBA
TV ZAGREB :PROGRAM PLUS[night program ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WPllVr7Eq8&list=UUzzwEnJchC7Bw2QUl_-waww&index=20
TV BEOGRAD 1:SCHEDULE MORNING PROGRAM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak4sQpoHALc&list=UUzzwEnJchC7Bw2QUl_-waww
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Xoi-Y5u_g&list=UUzzwEnJchC7Bw2QUl_-waww
TV BEOGRAD 2 START-UP 31.12 .1971:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYFZ_nJMWm8
Heisser Sommer (Hot Summer), a 1967 schlager/musical film with a strangely fascinating atmosphere...
http://www.mdr.de/tv/heisser_sommer100.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUqk9yWseco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzH3uG9Qqbk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpQxb4NHH4c
20 minutes of rare footage with everyday life and traffic scenes: on the ferry, Autobahn travel, a stop at the motorway restaurant and petrol station, etc.
Incidentally, the policeman who is interviewed at 6:09 is Rolf-Dieter Saternus; he hosted "Verkehrsmagazin" (traffic magazine) on GDR television.
It's only three weeks until the 9th of November, which marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Public German TV channels will be full of documentaries in the next few weeks, especially MDR and RBB, which are the regional channels for the eastern part of Germany. And there are some daily programmes with lots of archive footage from the GDR:
Chronik der Wende [chronicle of the turnaround] on RBB at 07:15 CET (07:05 on Sundays)
Produced in the 90s, this is a 163-part series featuring interviews and clips from Eastern and Western news bulletins about the political events of each particular day in the GDR. It started on 7th October (40th anniversary of the GDR) and will run until 18th March (first democratic elections). This is hugely interesting, especially when you understand some German.
http://mediathek.rbb-online.de/suche?s=Chronik+der+Wende
Berliner Abendschau vor 25 Jahren on RBB, almost every night, somwhere between 01:00 and 05:00 CET
This is a full repeat of the programme from 25 years ago. Abendschau was the main local news bulletin from West Berlin. In early October 1989, there were still a lot of unspectacular reports in that programme but this is going to change radically during the next few weeks.
http://mediathek.rbb-online.de/suche?s=berliner+abendschau
Tagesschau vor 25 Jahren on ARD Alpha, every night around 23:45 CET
This is the main West German national news bulletin. Apparently it's not available online.
Some important dates:
On 18th October 1989, the SED Politbüro forced Erich Honecker to resign and appointed Erich Krenz to be his successor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbI_8YfFjf0
On 4th November, the first legal demonstration for the freedom of press took place on Berlin's Alexanderplatz. It was shown live on East and West German TV.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPgviMTBx48
On 9th November, Günter Schabowski announced the freedom of travel for GDR citizens in a famous press conference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3qVjwzgC2A
Anybody got any ideas please ?
Go back a couple of pages on here and you may see links to Slovenian Only Fools and Horses ( although i cannot vouch if the links still work )
Thanks, I'll give it a try
Slightly off theme but when I was in Belgrade once my attention was drawn to a programme that never appeared in any schedules but consisted of fairly hard porn and went out on channel 3 on Friday nights about midnight !
http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/tsvorzwanzigjahren100.html
I wish they'd digitise some of the East German news bulletins from the 80s as well.
No it was the state broadcaster because it was someone who worked for the state broadcaster that drew it to my attention - he ran the VTs ! Apparently everyone knew about it but something innocuous actually appeared in the schedule.
The GDR news lead with Eric Honecker visiting a tractor factory, you couldn't make this up could you? The second item was about the riots but only showed "brave" injured Chinese soldiers in hospital all of whom seemed to have a blob of ketchup on their heads from one of those tomato shaped squeezy bottles.
But they just look the same as a non communist country, especially the guy from Sweden driving though.
This is the main GDR news bulletin from 3rd June 1989, when the riots on Tiananmen Square were already in full swing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqg7NeuUsW4
There was only a short announcement about Beijing (starting at 10:11), saying that "an extreme minority of people had blocked road junctions and held up army troops".
The same Youtube channel has more Aktuelle Kamera bulletins from April, May, and early June of 1989 but those from 4th June and beyond haven't been uploaded yet.
The bulletin from 7th May 1989 is interesting as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP0qR8oMpZ8
On this day, municipal elections were held in the GDR. In retrospect, this was a crucial turning point because civil rights activists were monitoring the counting of ballots, and they could prove that there were more "No" votes than officially proclaimed. It was the first time that some citizens publicly denounced the electoral fraud.
In the news bulletin itself, there were no results or projections. Instead, politicians and ordinary people were shown, casting their votes, and saying that everything was great in the GDR. This went on for 22 (!) minutes.
The official result (more than 98% "Yes" votes) was proclaimed later in the evening by Egon Krenz, who would become Honecker's successor as state and party leader in October.
Can anyone translate the final caption?