Preliminary experiments date back to the 1930s. Although limited in scope, and centered in Warsaw, they encouraged Polish Radio to plan a custom-built television studio (1940) and to inaugurate a regular service by 1941, but the German occupation set back progress by nearly a decade. It was 1947 before the State Telecommunications Institute resumed trials. In late 1951 the exhibition “Radio in the Struggle for Progress and Peace” demonstrated television’s capabilities to some 100,000 visitors. A half-hour test broadcast in October 1952 from the Ministry of Communications marked the official launching of Polish television (TVP) and regular transmissions of up to an hour’s duration, usually every Friday, soon followed (January 1953). The medium’s onerous working conditions, together with its limited range, militated against serious treatment by the party. Therefore, the criterion of political reliability played little part in appointments.

Rapid technological advances and the start of domesticsetproduction(theSoviet-basedWis\laandBelweder models) in 1956 accelerated television’s expansion in the late 1950s. Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz formally opened the Warsaw Television Centre in May 1956, but television would no longer remain the capital’s preserve. In line with the general tendency to decentralize cultural offerings, television centers quickly emerged in other cities. Simultaneously, the number of Polish license fee payers rose exponentially: from 5,000 in 1957 (when registration became compulsory) to 6.5 million by the mid-1970s. From 1957, television was on the air for several hours, five days a week; in February 1961 this increased to seven days. Indicative of television’s growing importance, the Committee for Radiophonic Affairs was renamed the Radio and TV Committee (December 1960).

Under Jerzy Panski (director of programming, 1957–63), TVP established a reputation for its cultural and entertainment schedule, which, unlike many other Eastern Bloc countries, also included nonsocialist films (Rashomon, Wages of Fear) and television serials (Dr. Kildare, Alfred Hitchcock Presents). Teatr Telewizji, one of its greatest achievements, began in 1958, and at the height of its popularity would be watched by almost half the available audience. TVP branched out into school programming (March 1961), and children’s bedtime television (1962), but its political and informational programs, particularly the main evening news (Dziennik TV, 1958–90), assumed increasing importance in the propagation of ideology. By the end of the decade fraternal socialist productions outnumbered Western imports. Traditionally hostile to communist ideology, Poles could enjoy popular domestic series with pro-Soviet messages (such as Stawka wi ̨ekszanizzycie—A Stake Greater Than Life Itself, 1968) while ignoring their partisan overtones. Television steadfastly promoted the official government line during crises (although events in 1968 saw the dismissal of 150 employees) yet also immortalized historic moments, such as First Secretary Edward Gierek’s personal appeal to strikers on the Baltic Coast (1971) to return to work.

During the 1970s, when Gierek attempted a great economic leap forward (funded by Western credits that ultimately condemned Poland to chronic indebtedness), television played a crucial role in promoting his “propaganda of success.” Under his crony, Maciej Szczepa ́nski (Radio and TV Committee Chairman, 1972–80), television was subjected to much more rigorous controls; Szczepanski himself oversaw production of Gierek’s speeches, and “live” interviews were prerecorded and thoroughly vetted, with presenters and guests learning their scripts by rote. It was the party leadership that took the major decisions—the Main Censorship Office (1945–90) played only an ancillary role. Television news, especially, presented an unswervingly positive image of contemporary life, in stark contrast to most Poles’ experience.

New technology and the industry’s expansion at the turn of the decade greatly facilitated this process. In 1969 massive studios opened in Warsaw, and the introduction of the Ampex system allowed prerecording. TVP2, designed to provide more high-brow programming, started in December 1970, while color broadcasts (like Soviet television, using the Secam system) commenced in time for the VI Party Congress (December 1971). Television schedules offered a mélange of mindless entertainment, propaganda, foreign imports, and high culture. Bergman and Fellini films ran alongside Columbo and Kojak, popular domestic soaps (Czterdziestolatek—Forty-Year-Old ) and, with Poland’s growing international success in soccer (1974) and athletics, extensive sports coverage.

The massive turnout to greet Pope John Paul II’s first visit (June 1979) presented a major challenge, and the government permitted television to transmit only heavily manipulated reports. Not even TVP, however, resisted the emergence of Solidarity (the regional Interenterprise Strike Committee, August 1980). The party leadership tolerated programs such as Listy o gospodarce (Letters on the Economy, November 1980), where viewers wrote in to criticize the economic and political situation. From March 1981, officials appeared on Monitor Rz ̨ adowy (Government Monitor), every Friday after the main evening news, to justify their activities. The declaration of martial law (December 13, 1981) ushered in a sharp, but brief, political freeze. TVP2 went off-air until February 1982, presenters appeared in military uniform to read out official announcements, and the secret police took over television’s upper echelons. Seventy employees were interned for pro-Solidarity sympathies. Television news displayed an extreme antiopposition bias. In protest, many actors mounted an effective boycott of television, lifting it only in the more liberal climate of the mid-1980s.

The last decade of communist rule initiated several key changes in TVP’s profile. The rise of Latin American soaps (Isaura the Slave-Girl), the introduction of erotic movies (the so-called pink series) and more chic news programs (such as Teleexpress [1986], and Panorama dnia [1987]), and commercials indicated a shift toward capitalism. The government, lacking credibility in society at large, realized it could not reform the economy without Solidarity’s assistance and brokered the Round Table talks of February to April 1989. Here, a special subcommittee dealt with media issues. Solidarity’s demands included access to TVP, the transformation of state television into a public broadcaster, and the reinstatement of journalists sacked during martial law. Prior to the first semifree elections of May 1989, it duly received television slots (Studio Solidarno ́s ́c) to promote its candidates. Its other demands would be met in the months that followed electoral “victory” (near total control of the newly established Senate, and all the seats available in the lower house). The creation of the first postcommunist government under the Catholic intellectual Tadeusz Mazowiecki (August 1989), followed by the dissolution of the party (January 1990), heralded the end of the party’s audio-visual monopoly.

The need to create democratic institutions often from scratch also had a profound impact on television. It played a key role in those changes by providing an important forum for political candidates in local, presidential (1990), then parliamentary elections (1991). In the chaos of transformation, politicians, reluctant to expose TVP to competition before it had the chance to transform, delayed much-needed new legislation. The December 1992 law established a nine-member National Radio and TV Council (KRRT) as the supreme body in audiovisual media affairs and transformed state television into a joint stock company as of January 1, 1994, its single shareholder being the Treasury. The KRRT was further charged with defining the criteria for license allocation over two rounds of bidding (1994, 1997). The law limited the share of foreign capital in Polish terrestrial broadcasters to one-third, but evoked most controversy for an ill-defined clause requiring programmers to respect “Christian values.”

Public television, meanwhile, implemented internal changes, creating a Biuro Reklamy (Advertising Bureau) (by 1994, advertising would provide 51 percent of TVP’s total income) and embarking on a massive expansion from 1992. Breakfast programming (Kawa czy herbata—Coffee or Tea) extended the daily schedule while TVP’s autonomous regional centers (eventually 12 in number and known collectively as TVP3) commenced their own local production, a move that required enormous financial investment. TV Polonia, a satellite channel for Polish communities abroad, launched in 1993, and a dedicated digital music channel, Tylko Muzyka (April 1997–February 1998), broke more new ground. As of January 1, 1995, TVP started using the PAL system, the Western European norm. The increasing share of revenue from advertising made public television highly sensitive to commercial competition and its resultant downmarket shift laid it open to charges of “dumbing down.” TVP successfully adopted Western formats: game shows (Blind Date, Wheel of Fortune), fly-on-the-wall documentaries, chat shows, and more relaxed news programming (a multipresenter Wiadomo ́sci replacing Dziennik). TVP2, traditionally more high-brow, also reflected these trends, showing American police high-speed pursuits alongside the minilectures of the philosopher Leszek Kol\akowski. Despite such activity, TVP remains hamstrung by its comparatively low funds (amounting to only one-sixth of French public television’s) and shows a tendency—most evident in program quality—to spread those funds thinly. Attempts at restructuring have largely failed.

Piracy characterized private broadcasting in the early 1990s, since the Ministry of Communications granted a license to only one new station (Echo, 1990). Small private stations mushroomed across Poland, many of which eventually joined Polonia 1, established by the Italian media magnate Nicolo Grauso in 1993. When he failed to win a franchise, Grauso withdrew from the scene, and Polonia 1 moved to Italy. TV Odra (1994) now serves as an umbrella for about a dozen stations broadcasting in the west and north of Poland. Somewhat surprisingly, given its lack of capital, the Franciscan Order’s TV Niepokalanów (1995) received a nationwide license in 1994 on condition that advertising did not exceed 2 percent of its schedule. In 2001, it managed to raise this to 15 percent, paying a larger fee for its franchise; and TV Puls, which then started broadcasting on its frequencies, supplemented its largely religious programming with family entertainment (The Cosby Show, Little House on the Prairie).

The greatest challenge to TVP comes from two private stations—Zygmunt Solorz’s Polsat (1992), the only totally commercial station with a nationwide franchise, and Mariusz Walter’s TVN (1997), which began as a supraregional station but has since expanded. Solorz won a ten-year franchise in 1994, and, in addition to his major cable interests (Dami) and media investments in all three Baltic states, has developed his terrestrial holdings—adding TV4, formerly the debt-ridden Nasza Telewizja (Our Television, 1997)— and extended into satellite (Polsat 2, 1997), and digital (Polsat Cyfrowy, 2000). TVN became an exclusively Polish concern after the withdrawal of its American partner CME in 1998. Its original license gave access to northern Poland, Warsaw, and L\ód ́z, but Walter bought TV Wis\la (1994) in 1997, thereby extending TVN’s coverage to the south. Its presence was further enhanced by inclusion in the pay-per-view digital platform Wizja TV. In September 2001 TVN started broadcasting the first news channel, TVN 24, loosely modeled on CNN.

Polsat has occasionally achieved higher ratings than TVP1 (up to 30 percent audience share in 1998), but like TVN is generally seen as being more downmarket. Both have gained notoriety for their reality shows: TVN launched Big Brother in Spring 2001, which the KRRT condemned as “socially harmful,” but proved enormously popular with the audience (70 percent/8.4 million viewers watched the final episode). Its other key programs include Milionerzy (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, autumn 1999) and Fakty, its main evening news program, which is almost as popular as Wiadomo ́sci. The poaching of several TVP star presenters (including Tomasz Lis, Krzysztof Ibisz) boosted its profile. Polsat’s soaps enjoy greater success; it owns the rights to the lucrative European Champions League and broadcast the 2002 World Cup. Together, TVP, TVN, and Polsat currently dominate television advertising (90 percent of all ad spend/US$1.45 billion in 2001).

Cable and digital television are growing in importance. Cable’s origins lie in the early 1990s: key operators today are Polska Telewizja Kablowa (PTK: founded 1989, license 1995) with networks in most cities, and Aster City Cable (license 1997). Digital has been an arena of major struggle between American-backed operations—HBO (1996) and Wizja TV (launched 1998; taken over by the Dutch-owned United Pan-Europe Communications in 1999)—and the French Canal
Cyfrowy (license 1997). The former broadcast from outside Poland (from Hungary and the United Kingdom, respectively) to circumvent restrictions on foreign capital, which caused Canal
to complain about unfair competition. However, in December 2001, Wizja and Canal
merged to form a single company, Telewizja Korporacja Partycypacyjna (25 and 75 percent shares, respectively). Further concentration of cable and digital television looks likely.

Controversy dogged both licensing rounds, with the Supreme Court challenging nearly every award on procedural grounds. In each case the KRRT has confirmed its original decision. Politicians often intervene in the workings of television: President Wa\le ̨sa, dissatisfied with the 1994 licensing round, sacked the KRRT head, Marek Markiewicz, although his authority to do so was doubtful. The political composition of the Council remains a contentious issue, with all parties seeking to advance their own agendas. These problems particularly affect TVP, one of whose most dynamic directors, Wies\law Walendziak, resigned in protest at political interference in February 1996. His successor, Ryszard Miazek, declared that TVP journalists should seek to inform viewers about, rather than comment on, politicians’ statements, which seemed to presage a return to communist practices.

A new media bill, designed to bring Poland (a member of the European Broadcasting Union since 1992) into line with EU legislation, is creating a major furor. The bill lifts restrictions on foreign capital for European businesses and relaxes them for others, proposes strict limits on cross-media ownership (no nationwide newspaper can simultaneously own a national station), and greatly bolsters TVP’s position by allowing it to launch unlimited channels. President Kwas ́niewski has promised to exercise his veto. The Polish television industry nonetheless constitutes one of the great success stories of postcommunist Central and East European broadcasting.