Television Presentation from Defunct Countries and Regimes

The original thread (LINK) was recently archived, so here's part 2.

Let's start with a longer version of a clip whose brief excerpts we have seen in the old thread. It's a video of South Africa's SABC from 1977, just two years after television was introduced to the conservative, white-ruled country.

The clip includes:

* A short in-vision continuity announcement
* A complete newscast
* Epilogue, a religious though-of-the-day segment
* Another short in-vision continuity announcement
* The Apartheid-era flag and national anthem
* The SABC clock
* The test pattern



As you may have noticed, the test pattern mentions the West Cape region. Does anyone know whether the SABC aired regional programming or were test patterns the only "regionalized" element?

It would be a bit of a waste to only show test patterns.

It looks to me like that test pattern (and what appears to be a radio station) was put out by the transmitter when the feed from SABC was turned off.

That would be my guess. The BBC took a different approach and put the testcard on the network feed for 30 minutes or so, then removed any video from the output (so there were no sync pulses), which was - I think - the signal for the transmitters to power-down?

I've travelled a lot around South Africa in recent years, I've never (knowingly) seen a regional opt out on SABC.
I think I asked when I visited SABC once, and I think they said they've never had regional opt outs (only programmes that are networked from Cape Town and Durban)

Interesting! Considering the vast size and regional diversity of South Africa, it's certainly surprising that they never had any regional programming.

*****

Communist-era Czechoslovak TV news, 1988:

Yep - but Apartheid in South Africa cast a large shadow of broadcasting in the country I guess. (TV started relatively late in South Africa too - not until the mid-70s?)

As I understand it, in the 80s, South Africa may not have had regional TV, but the various SABC TV stations were aimed at different language groups, so they may not have been 'regional' but they were aimed at different communities within the country?

Here's a documentary about the early years of SABC Television and the intense political pressures faced by the broadcaster:

Yes, remember also that terrestrial there doesn't reach some areas, so satellite is the only viable delivery method, so easier to have national channels aimed specific demographics etc . SABC are on M-Net MultiChoice's platform [1], no 'PSB EPG prominence' rules there, I seem to recall that SABC 1/2/3 are buried at 521 ish !

[1] BTW I think they were the world's first exponent of DVB-S and their own platform and receivers 1996, two years before BSkyB were doing the same.

East German television's English instruction series English for You; 1970s:

TV Sarajevo, Yugoslavia...

Ident, 1980s:



News, 1980 (briefly seen in the old thread, but then deleted):