2014 | 5 | Television Histories in (Post)Socialist Europe
While recent comparative and transnational approaches in the field of European television history have demonstrated the need for (post)socialist television histories in Europe, there is currently limited scholarship dedicated to this geopolitical area of television in Europe. This area of study has mostly been relegated to the margins of other disciplines and remained isolated by national languages inaccessible to non-native scholars.
This issue is guest edited at the initiative of the European (Post)Socialist Television History Network. It opens up new perspectives on television histories from Eastern Europe and situates this emerging area of study beyond the political histories of the nation-state, Cold War isolation and East-West antagonism.
Co-edited by the European (Post)Socialist Television History Network
Recent Submissions
- ArticleEditorialMustata, Dana (2014-06-23) , S. 1-6This thematic issue invites its readers to reflect upon two central questions. If we speak about socialist and post-socialist television in Europe, then:What is ‘socialist’ about television in Europe?How do we approach ‘television’ in (post)socialist Europe?These questions come with issues of definition, approach and positioning of this area of study within a broader European agenda.
- ArticleRetro Reappropriations. Responses to The Thirty Cases of Major Zeman in the Czech RepublicPehe, Veronika (2014-06-24) , S. 100-107The first post-1989 rerun of the 1970s television series Třicet případů majora Zemana (‘The Thirty Cases of Major Zeman,’ or in short ‘Major Zeman’) in the Czech Republic generated a heated controversy in the media. This article will examine why Major Zeman became such a contested topic and presents an analysis of responses to the series. The paper suggests that the rescreening consolidated a particular ‘retro’ reception of the series, which reappropriates socialist popular culture and ascribes it with an ostensibly apolitical, postmodern, ironic sensibility. The paper will consider how such a response can be reconciled with more explicitly political approaches to the series, arguing that retro has a political agenda of its own.
- ArticleMultiple Faces of the Nostalgia Channel in RussiaKalinina, Ekaterina (2014-06-24) , S. 108-118This article seeks to study Russian niche channel Nostalgia, which started broadcasting in 2004, and in particular, to explore the reasons behind founding this channel and the functions it fulfils, as envisioned by the channel’s producers. The analysis is informed by semi-structured interviews with the channel’s two main representatives – the producer and the first editor-in-chief, and content analysis of the programme, which was briefly examined for general attitude towards the Soviet past. At the same time this article aims at providing thorough insight into conceptualization of nostalgia relying upon the data from the interviews.
- ArticleThe Problem of Personality on Soviet Television, 1950s-1960s*Huxtable, Simon (2014-06-24) , S. 119-130Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, Soviet television acquired a growing popularity amongst the public. In a period when its technical and artistic quality remained low, the welcoming presence of TV personalities like Valentina Leont’eva and Iurii Fokin was one key reason for TV’s popularity. In this article, which combines an analysis of selected TV shows with archival documents and press articles, professionals’ discussions over the desirable qualities that personalities needed to possess are placed within a wider historical context where cultivating one's personality was seen as essential for the reconstruction of society after the excesses of Stalinism.
- ArticleComparing Socialist and Post-Socialist Television Culture. Fifty Years of Television in CroatiaPeruško, Zrinjka; Čuvalo, Antonija (2014-06-24) , S. 131-150This article builds a theoretical model for comparative analysis of media culture based on the notion of genre, and applies it to a comparative analysis of television as a cultural form in socialist and post-socialist Croatia. The paper explores how the shares and generic composition of programme modes of information, entertainment and fiction change in time, and how the contribution of different genres to programme flow and modes varies with the changes of political, economic and technological context. Longitudinal trends in television flows are comparatively evaluated in relation to trends in genre developments in Europe and their relationship to the changes in the cultural role of television. The results show a decrease in the information and an increase in the fiction mode between socialism and democracy, with some similarities of the Croatian and western television culture in relation to genre and mode composition and flow, albeit with a belated introduction of neo television genres. Notwithstanding the limited freedom of expression and ideological content, which necessarily influenced socialist media culture, television as a cultural form in Croatia developed in concert with the global programme flows. The article is based on original content analysis of television schedules where the unit of analysis is a television programme listing. The analogue television universe is represented by longitudinal data for 1959, 1969, 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2009. The stratified systematic sample (N=3934) for each chosen year consists of two constructed weeks from a universe of all listed programmes broadcast on all free to air television channels with a national reach license.
- ArticleThe Eichmann Trial on East German Television: On (Not) Reporting About a Transnational Media EventKeilbach, Judith (2014-06-24) , S. 17-22This paper discusses the Eichmann trial (1961) as a transnational media event. It describes on the one hand the co-operation of different institutions that facilitated the trial’s filming as well as the worldwide distribution of the footage. On the other hand it draws on East and West German television programs to show how the GDR used the Eichmann trial to campaign against the FRG. Examples from the East German Der schwarze Kanal and the West German Die rote Optik illustrate the reciprocal monitoring and commenting of the other side’s television program. The case of the Eichmann trial points at a significant role of broadcast media during the Cold War. Television advocated the respective political system with particular programs denigrating the other side which sometimes resulted in strong reactions.
- ArticleIntervision: Searching for TracesYurtaeva, Yulia (2014-06-24) , S. 23-34Researching Intervision - the Eastern European organization for television program exchanges between 1960 and 1993 – relies on examining primary sources spread over several archives throughout Europe. It requires collecting structural and administrative data, doing interviews with contemporary witnesses and evaluating statistics on a topic that was formerly either focused on the nation or described from a Western perspective. This article makes an overview of the primary sources available for researching the history of program exchange in Eastern Europe during the Cold War and singles the archival challenges one is confronted with in this type of research.
- ArticleFolklore Music on Romanian TV: From State Socialist Television to Private ChannelsUrdea, Alexandra (2014-06-24) , S. 35-49This article explores specific televised folklore performances of muzică populară in Romania as ‘media rituals.’ I argue that this particular kind of folklore performance can be analysed as television genre. The article follows different articulations of this genre from its televised appearances on the public television channel in the last decades of the communist period to the post-1989 niche television stations specialised in folklore. The changes in the form of the genre, and the negotiations of value and authenticity that take place through the televised performances reveal the role of television in disseminating a social poetics of the nation state.
- ArticleExploring Transnational Media Exchange in the 1960sGumbert, Heather (2014-06-24) , S. 50-59In this article, Heather Gumbert uses archival and contemporary writing to reflect on and historicize discussion of the significance of imported programming in Europe in the 1960s, especially in the German Democratic Republic. Imported programming was a cornerstone of the television schedules of national broadcasters, particularly in “television poor” eastern European countries, with implications for the ways in which those broadcasters could shape the visions projected to their audiences.
- ArticleConnected Enemies? Programming Transfer between East and West During the Cold War and the Example of East German TelevisionBeutelschmidt, Thomas; Oehmig, Richard (2014-06-24) , S. 60-67The article analyzes the international transfer of television programming during the Cold War as exemplified by East German television. The study focuses on the structures of imports of foreign content and on the feedback processes in cultural policy during the continuation of such imports. The article examines the hypothesis that programming transfer as practiced by East German television can be described as a shifting of the institution between disparate logics of politics and cultural policy and intrinsic dynamics of the medium.
- ArticleThe Great Époque of the Consumption of Imported Broadcasts: West European Television Channels and Polish Audiences during the System TransitionWasiak, Patryk (2014-06-24) , S. 68-78This article discusses how Polish audiences “domesticated” West European television content that was made available through satellite dishes and semi-legal cable television channels at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. Based on the analysis of viewers’ memoirs and content of magazines dedicated to satellite television, the article explores the way Poles considered channels available thanks to Astra satellite broadcast as an attractive entertainment juxtaposed with dull content offered by TVP, the national broadcaster. As this article shows, they primarily “domesticated” German late night erotic shows symbolized by Tutti Frutti and music videos from MTV Europe. In order to understand why satellite and cable television systems became popular in Poland during the system transition, it is necessary to take under consideration the reasons of Polish audiences’ interest in such broadcasts. It is also vital to analyze the role of cultural intermediaries such as private entrepreneurs who were offering satellite television receivers and access to cable television.
- ArticleUnderstanding Socialist Television: Concepts, Objects, MethodsMihelj, Sabina (2014-06-24) , S. 7-16This article develops a number of conceptual and methodological proposals aimed at furthering a firmer agenda for the field of socialist television studies. It opens by addressing the issue of relevance of the field, identifying three critical contributions the study of socialist television can make to media, communication and cultural studies. It then puts forward a number of proposals tied to three key issues: strategies of overcoming the Cold War framework that dominates much of existing literature; the importance of a multilayered analysis of socialist television that considers its cultural, political as well as economic aspects; and the ways in which we can challenge the prevalence of methodological nationalism in the field.
- ArticleItalianization Accomplished: Forms and Structures of Albanian Television’s Dependency on Italian Media and CultureCarelli, Paolo (2014-06-24) , S. 79-87After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communist rule in 1989, the Eastern European media system embarked on a process of transformation characterised by political liberalization and commercialization. In Albania, this process was accompanied by a growing dependence on Italian television as a structural, economic and cultural model for Albanian television. This article seeks to outline the different layers and aspects of dependence that link Italian and Albanian television systems and which began to be established during the last years of the communist regime and remain prominent today. From the first programmes produced by Albanian television broadcasters in the early 1990s to the recent appearances of Italian television presenters on Albanian private channels we can observe a steady and continuous trend of growing dependency on Albania’s western neighbour.
- ArticleEast and West on the Finnish Screen: Early Transnational Television in FinlandPajala, Mari (2014-06-24) , S. 88-99Research on Finnish television history has so far emphasized Western influences. However, the Finnish television environment was also shaped in many ways by contacts with socialist television cultures. This article analyses the first volume of the television magazine Katso to trace the various transnational relations, which shaped the early Finnish television environment and to discuss the cultural meanings of socialist television in this environment. Nearly every issue of Katso in 1960 discusses television in a transnational context. Transnational themes fall into four categories: (1) learning about television in other countries; (2) the Eurovision and Nordvision networks; (3) watching television across national borders (Swedish and Tallinn television but also television across surprising distances); and (4) visions of world television. Katso’s understanding of television emphasizes the literal meaning of television: to see far. The magazine sets no clear limits to what television could do in terms of overcoming physical distance and ideological borders. The magazine avoids overt politics in discussing television from both the West and the East and represents television broadcasting from Tallinn as a potential source of popular television for Finnish audiences.