Television in Central Europe has undergone major changes in the last decade. Up until the revolutions of 1989, all of the countries of the region, with the exception of Austria, were ruled by Communist governments. These attempted, with varying degrees of success, to exercise a complete monopoly over economic, political and symbolic power. They thus had television systems which were very different from that existing in the United States and quite different from those of western Europe. Since 1989, there has been a collapse of Communist rule and the establishment of a variety of new governments in the region television has been both a contributory factor to that transformation and has, in its turn, been itself transformed.

There is a well-known model of the "Soviet-Communist media system" which dates from the depths of the Cold War. In this account, the Communist political elite regarded the media as a major instrument of social engineering and voiced nothing which would cast doubt on their vision of a rosy Communist future. Media also played its role in the construction of the Communist human psychology which would flourish in the new world. The media was thus at once closely controlled politically and didactic in its intent, both in its news and in what passed for its entertainment.

By the end of the 1980s, this model was seriously at odds with the reality of the television systems of Central Europe. Even if it had ever been accurate, it was certainly now false. There was no single "Soviet-Communist" model. On the contrary, broadcasting differed considerably from country to country.

At one extreme stood Romania, where many of the features of the classic model could still be observed in action and where the combination of political tyranny and economic disaster had brought the television system very close to collapse. Another example of a tightly controlled system was that in what was then Czechoslovakia. After the Russian invasion of 1968, a conservative Stalinist government was imposed which put an end to any and all of the manifestations of liberalism. Television was amongst the new government's chief targets. Direct political control continued to be exercised right up to the fall of the regime in the Velvet Revolution of 1989.

Even in Czechoslovakia, however, despite continual policy statements from the top that entertainment should reflect Communist values, the buyers of television imports found it impossible to reach their quotas of programs from other Communist countries. There was a continual inflow of programs from the capitalist west, and these often accounted for a majority of imported programs.

This inability to control what we might term the symbolic landscape was widespread in Central Europe. In many cases, it is difficult to find evidence that, by the 1980s, there was any serious will on the part of the political leadership, either in government or in television, even to attempt to enforce media control. By the mid-1980s, for example, the three largest suppliers of imported programs to Hungarian television (MTV) were, in order of numbers of programs supplied, the United Kingdom, West Germany and the United States All of these provided many more programs than did the USSR.

Political control was more sustained in news and current affairs, but even in those areas observers detected a shift of emphasis in the course of the 1980s. In Poland, after the banning of Solidarity and the imposition of martial law in December 1981, there was a return to close control of the news. By the middle of the decade, however, the government spokespersons increasingly were prepared to engage in indirect debates in the media with the representatives of the opposition. One Polish spokesperson even won a small propaganda victory by demanding to be allowed to broadcast on Radio Free Europe and then claiming capitalist censorship when refused. The general tone of the news and current affairs programming gradually became one in which, rather than proclaiming the glories of Communist construction to accepting the simple fact of Communist rule and upon the impossibility of replacing it while the Russian veto remained.

Because of these developments, it is profitable to think about the television systems in Central Europe, not as examples of the unique Communist media system, but as one distinct version of a more general type. They may be considered as examples of state controlled television of a kind similar to RTVE in Spain under Franco or the ORTF in France under de Gaulle. In each case, there was a different degree of ideological control over the output of the stations, but they all had in common the fact that there were obvious and direct links between the television system and the government in power. The distance from, and attempt to balance between, the major political parties which are marked features both of the public service broadcasters of north-western Europe and the U.S. commercial system, were here quite absent.

Television has not been a simple and direct beneficiary of a new freedom and independence. On the contrary, in many countries it continues to have a subordinate relationship to politics in general and to the governing parties in particular. There have indeed been considerable changes to the broadcasting systems, but there have also been marked continuities.

The politicians and broadcasters of Central Europe have been deluged with advice from well-paid western experts. Some of these have advocated the adoption of a version of the U.S. system, in which the central place is held by commercial companies. Others have advocated the western European model in which state broadcasters hold a central role. In general, a mixed system of broadcasting is emerging in Central Europe in which ownership is much more on the European model than the U.S. model. There is, generally, a large state broadcaster at the center of the system, with an increasing number of franchised and supervised commercial channels emerging to compete with them.

There is, however, little evidence that this restructuring of television is producing a solution to the problem of political subordination. In the extreme cases like Croatia and Serbia, political control of television remains as tight, or possibly even tighter, than it was in the last days of the Communist regimes. In most other cases, the new political elites have been less successful in their attempts to control broadcasting, despite sometimes vigorous efforts in that direction.

The most dramatic case was that of the Hungarian "media wars." As part of the preparations for the first democratic elections in 1990, the main political forces agreed on new heads for Hungarian Radio and Hungarian Television (MTV). These were appointed by means of a process which involved the consent of both the governing party and the opposition. The intention was to make the direction of broadcasting independent of pressure from political parties. The situation was seen by all parties as an interim one, since the new appointees headed organisations operating under media laws inherited from the Communist regime. Their task was to ensure that the transition to a new broadcasting system was a smooth one unmarked by partisan strife.

The man appointed to head MTV was an eminent sociologist and long-time opponent of the old regime, Elemer Hankiss. Opinions as to the merits of his leadership vary widely, even amongst those who count themselves his strong supporters, but there is no doubt that he pursued a line independent of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) government which emerged as a result of the first election.

This party was concerned about two things. Firstly, it perceived that the bulk of the printed press supported opposition parties both during the election and in the aftermath. It therefore wished to use broadcasting as a counterweight to this bias, and to ensure that TV and radio gave a full and favourable account of the government's point of view. It was particularly concerned to ensure that the main news and current affairs programs reflected this orientation and wanted them staffed by people it considered politically reliable.

The second major issue was that the MDF was a strongly nationalist party and it included a vocal right-wing which voiced xenophobic and anti-Semitic views. The party as a whole was strongly committed to rebuilding and sustaining a sense of Hungarian national identity. They saw television as a major element in helping form this national consciousness, and were therefore very concerned that it reflected what they said were the genuine "Hungarian" concerns and cultural values.

The government was further concerned that large numbers of ethnic Hungarians live outside the contemporary borders of Hungary. These Hungarian minorities have often experienced very real national oppression at the hands of the majority communities in the neighbouring states in which they live. The MDF government wished to provide cultural resources for these people, and television programming was one important element they attempted to make available.

Hankiss, and many professional broadcasters, resisted the pressure to turn TV into an MDF fiefdom. The government therefore attempted to use three forms of pressure to force broadcasters into line. The first was to restrict the government subsidy to MTV, thus provoking a financial crisis. The money saved was used to launch a satellite channel, Duna TV, directed at the extra-territorial Hungarian populations. Secondly, they mobilised their followers in street demonstrations against the leadership of radio and television. Thirdly, they attempted to sack the existing directors.

In the short term, these pressures proved inadequate to achieve the desired results. Hankiss countered the financial squeeze by greatly increasing the advertising revenues of MTV. Supporters of the opposition parties organised their own street demonstrations in favor of the existing directors. The president of the Republic, who was legally responsible for their appointment, refused to sign the dismissal notices and the sackings became bogged down in legal and constitutional wrangling.

The matter was not soon resolved, however, since the Parliament found itself unable to reach a quick decision on the form of a new broadcasting law. The interim arrangements thus persisted for much longer than was originally envisaged. In the long term, though, the government was able to wear down the resistance of Hankiss and his colleagues. In December 1992 they were interrogated by a parliamentary inquiry into allegations that they had mismanaged the funds of MTV. Although they were able successfully to defend themselves, the strain proved too much, and in January 1993 both Hankiss and the director of radio resigned. The government was not constitutionally able to replace them, since that power lay with the president. Instead, it appointed its own supporters, whom it had already installed as deputy directors, as acting directors, thus effectively bypassing the legal process.

The new acting directors carried out a series of political purges of the broadcasting organisations, particularly the news sections. They managed to ensure that the key posts were held by individuals loyal to the MDF. By the elections of 1994, MTV was effectively a propaganda weapon for the MDF government. The election was a crushing defeat for the MDF, and a big win for the Hungarian Socialist Party, the main successor to the Communists. The election also confirmed a suspicion long held by scholarly observers, but persistently disbelieved by politicians around the world, that there is no simple and direct connection between control of television and electoral success.

In 1995, five years after the first democratic elections, there was no new comprehensive television law in Hungary. Broadcasting still operated under a legal framework which is, in essence, inherited from the Communist regime. The new government has been less aggressive in its attempts to control television, and its threats of mass sackings are motivated more by the need to cut costs than to remove political opponents from editorial positions. It has still found it convenient to preside over a television system whose basic structure remains untransformed.

Other countries have made more progress in installing new legal regimes for broadcasting and in awarding the licenses for commercial broadcasters. This does not mean, however, that elsewhere the process has been free of political interference. In the new Czech Republic (Czechia) which issued from the collapse of the old Czechoslovak Federal Republic at the end of 1992, in the other successor state Slovakia and in Poland, the new laws grant a measure of independence from the government to broadcasting councils. In all three cases, leading politicians have been reluctant to accept that they cannot interfere in the direction of television. One of the major tasks of the new broadcasting councils is to allocate the new commercial franchises, and this has often proved politically contentious.

These new commercial stations were envisaged not merely as commercial ventures but as a prime mechanism by which the political culture of Central Europe could be brought closer to the norms prevailing in western capitalist countries. It was argued in Central Europe that the only way out of the trap of government intervention in television, which turned every attempt to create western European-style public service broadcasters into the mere mouthpieces of the ruling party, was to establish a commercial system. The pursuit of profit would lead to an attempt to maximise audiences in order to maximise advertising revenue, and this in turn would lead to the adoption of a neutral political position in order to avoid alienating any large section of the potential audience.

The argument had a considerable persuasive force. This was partly due to the positive example of the well-documented development of U.S. print journalism towards objectivity as a result of similar economic factors. In a negative sense, it was partly due to the continuing pervasive interference of governments in the running of the would-be public service broadcasters.

Two factors have conspired to undermine the appeal of the case. In the first place, the career of Sylvio Berlusconi in Italy was widely noted in Central Europe. In direct contradiction to the Hungarian example, this seemed to demonstrate that, at least under some circumstances, the control of television could be a major factor in political success. Further, it demonstrated that partisan television was as possible in a commercial system as in a state one.

The second factor is that, at least in countries emerging from a long period of repressive government, economic groupings are often closely aligned with different political factions. Whatever may be the reality, political leaders as diverse as Walensa in Poland, Meciar in Slovakia, and Klaus in Czechia are convinced that it is important to their political future that the new commercial licences are awarded to people whose views they believe they can rely on.

A good example is provided by Czechia, whose government is the most free-market oriented of the region. The first commercial licence was awarded the first national commercial television licence to a North American owned company, Central European Television. This provoked an angry attack from the governing party, who believed that many of the local collaborators of the new station (TV Nova) were its political opponents, if not actually former supporters of the Communist regime.

The power to grant licences for commercial operators was granted to the National Broadcasting Council under the new Broadcasting Law rushed through parliament at the birth of the new state. This body is independent of parliament and the government, although its members are appointed by the parliament. The only power that parliament retains over the Council is the ability to reject its annual report. In the event of that happening, the council members must resign and a new council is appointed.

In both 1993 and 1994, the governing party attempted to reject the annual report, but narrowly failed to command a majority. In 1993, the vote was tied and the political pressure was so great that the chair of the council felt obliged to resign as an individual. Subsequently, in the course of 1995, the parliament has launched a new offensive, this time concentrating on the holders of radio licences, whom it alleges paid for their franchises and stations with funds acquired illegally under the old regime.

Up until the 1996, then, the broadcasting systems of Central Europe have remained highly politicised. In this, they display a marked continuity with the old order. It is important, however, to note that while there is no apparent transformation in the nature of the systems, there has been a major change in the degree of control. The old Communist systems were, in principal, unified. Whatever the constitution may have said, the Central Committee reached all of the important decisions, including those on television. That is not to say that there were not struggles in Communists societies. Quite apart from those between the bureaucrats and the workers and peasants they ruled, there were in reality bitter fights within the bureaucracy itself, which sometimes found expression in different nuances in the mass media. All of these differences, and indeed their expression, were contained within the Communist system itself. They were never subject to the popular will. Consequently, the degree of direct political control was very high.

In the new, post-Communist, systems of Central Europe there is a plurality of parties and of economic forces. Political disputes are now between parties and take place in public, and there are occasions upon which the popular will is expressed, in however distorted a form. Attempts by the government to control the mass media therefore face much greater obstacles. They are contested by other parties and by journalists and other media workers. It is extremely difficult for any of the new governments to have the same sort of complete and stable control over the whole of the mass media as did the old Communist regimes. This new contestation of political control, and the consequent spaces which open up for oppositional voices, is the major shift in the political aspect of television since the collapse of communism, and it is a great gain for democracy.

Some of the other major issues in Central European television are local variations of more general themes. The first of these concerns the relationship between state-based broadcasting services and the increasingly internationalised world television industry. Many of the new governments in Central Europe have adopted strongly nationalistic policies and, as a consequence, have written into their broadcasting acts restrictions on the ownership and direction of commercial broadcasters. They often have specific instructions about the amount of nationally-originated material that must be broadcast, either included in the broadcasting acts themselves or in the licences to broadcast awarded to commercial companies.

These measures are under pressure from two directions. In the first place, a number of transnational media enterprises view the emerging markets of Central Europe as important and seek to position themselves strongly in terms of ownership of media industries. At the same time, the would-be local commercial broadcasters are often lacking in the technical skills of running profitable channels and, above all, in the capital needed to establish such channels. There is thus a constant tendency for the restrictions on ownership to be challenged.

One of the allegations directed by Polish President Lech Walensa against the winner of the first Polish national terrestrial commercial franchise, Polsat, was that it was secretly controlled by Rupert Murdoch. This charge was probably advanced as a cover for more directly political objections. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Murdoch, Hersant, Bertelsmann, Berlusconi, and almost every other large international player has, at one time or another, attempted to gain entry to the local television market.

The most successful so far of these companies is Central European Television, which already controls TV Nova in Czechia and which is likely to be granted a licence in Hungary in the course of 1995. This is not a major media concern, being effectively controlled by an heir to a U.S. Lauder cosmetics fortune.

Its activity in the region is interesting for two reasons. In the first place, it is an example of what may be termed "missionary capitalism". According to its most prominent figure, the interest in the region is only partly commercial and springs in part from Lauder's rediscovery of his family roots. That is not to say that its operation is not run as an aggressive commercial venture interested in maximising revenue and return on capital, but that its path into the ownership of television is a different one from the normal pattern.

The second reason the success of this company is interesting is that it is a reflection, in part at least, of the close link between political and economic power in the region. Its most prominent negotiator is Mark Palmer, former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary, who is extremely well-known to all of the major political figures, both former Communists and former oppositionists, in the region.

The other factor which bears upon the relationship between nationalism and the world market is the question of imported programming. The broadcast of imported programs is no novelty in most of the regions. Previously, the main constraint was often a shortage of the hard currency needed to buy them. That has now been lifted, and there has been a considerable increase in the number of imported programs, particularly from the United States. This irritates the more nationalist-minded politicians because they would prefer the population to be watching material which more closely reflected their view of the local cultural values. On the other hand, imported programming has initially proved very popular with the audiences, and is relatively cheap to acquire. All of the states in Central Europe are, relatively speaking, small and poor and lack the resources of the major U.S. networks, or the BBC. The choice, therefore, was often not between broadcasting good local programs with a strong "national" content and good imported programs, but between cheap local programs with a strong "national" content and good imported programs. The latter produced good audiences and cost little, and so was popular with broadcasters as well as audiences.

Recently, there have been suggestions that the audiences in Central Europe are becoming more "standardized" in their tastes. After the initial period in which anything from the West, and particularly from the United States, was regarded as automatically better than anything local, audiences in some countries are apparently starting to discriminate between good and bad imported programs. They are also, it is claimed, beginning to express the well-known preference for good local programs over good imported programs. Some broadcasters are attempting to meet this demand. Given the poverty of resources, it is unlikely that they will be able to produce a full schedule of high quality education, information and entertainment, but there are plans to try to go as far as is possible. The other open question is whether popular local programming will be of a kind to satisfy the definition of "national" advanced by politicians. In some cases, their view of properly national television consisted of a diet of church services and folk dancing. Whether this kind of programming could prove enduringly popular is a matter of some doubt. It is more likely that broadcasting in the region will tend to follow the more general European pattern in which, at least in prime time, the programming tends increasingly to be local in origin. Very often it is of a franchised nature and is dominated by the cheaper kinds of programming like games and quizzes.

The final factor to consider is the funding of television. Internationally, funding systems may be arranged on a spectrum. At one extreme there is the system of competing private channels financed more or less entirely out of advertising revenue. The United States is the best-known example of this pattern. At the other extreme is the broadcaster dependent upon state funds. The BBC is the best known example of this pattern, even though its funds are mediated through a licence fee. In between, there are a number of variants. One which has been popular in Europe is the state broadcaster which is, either wholly (Spain) or partly (Germany), dependent upon advertising. Up until the 1970s, the state broadcasters were the only television providers and faced no competition for advertising revenue. In these circumstances, the commercial revenue provided a welcome source of additional funding independent of politicians, which could be generated without excessive concessions to commercial programming. The introduction of private broadcasting everywhere produced a crisis in this model of funding.

The state broadcasters of Central Europe in general combine revenue sources. They enjoy state funding, either directly through a budget subsidy or indirectly through a licence fee. They also enjoy advertising revenue. So long as there were no commercial competitors, this advertising revenue was very valuable. It supplemented shrinking state funding. It permitted a measure of political independence, as we saw in the case of Hungary. It seemed a perfect source of funding.

The entry of commercial competitors has begun to change this situation. In the Czech case, for example, TV Nova very rapidly gained large audiences and has been able to use these to win a large share of advertising revenue. Even though the total amount of advertising revenue available in Czechia is growing quite quickly, the impact of competition upon the state broadcaster has still been quite marked. The state broadcaster is here further handicapped, as is common in Central Europe, by regulations which restrict the amount of advertising time that they can sell to below that permitted to the commercial broadcasters.

The dilemma faced by the state broadcaster is increasingly the one which is familiar from Western Europe. On the one hand, there is the possibility of meeting the commercial challenge head on. While this will almost certainly mean an improvement in some aspects of programming, it will also mean the acceptance of the dominance of commercial goals in production, purchase and scheduling. This runs counter to any attempt to develop a public service-type broadcasting policy. On the other hand, the state broadcaster could accept a much smaller audience share and consequently less revenue from advertising. This would not only lead to a decline in the available budgets for production and purchase, but would also throw the broadcasters upon the mercy of the politicians. As we have seen, the political culture in Central Europe is not one in which the government is likely to increase the subsidy to television without demanding concessions in return. This, in turn, would defeat any attempt at constructing a public service-type broadcaster.

It has here been argued that, during the Communist era, broadcasting in Central Europe was best understood as one extreme version of a more common European type of state intervention. As the legacy of Communism recedes more and more into the past, this European dimension becomes ever more clear. Increasingly, the dilemmas and problems of television in Central Europe are clearly variants, albeit often extreme variants, of dilemmas and problems faced more widely in Europe, and perhaps beyond. =-Colin Sparks