Television Presentation From Defunct Countries and Regimes

A TV presentation enthusiast from Serbia has set up an interesting, frequently updated blog devoted to recreations of Yugoslav-era television presentation (all based on actual recordings):

http://jrtnostalgija.blogspot.com/

(The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was made up of the present-day countries of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Macedonia).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/az2si/jrt1a_zps8af4512e.png
Images: AcaRadio

From Apartheid-era South Africa...

Continuity at the end of the day's English-language transmissions on SABC's TV1, 1985:



Various bits and pieces of SABC presentation from the 1980s:

A montage of East German TV:

There is something surreal about Apartheid-era SABC presentation. Everything looks, sounds and feels like a typical British, Dutch or German broadcaster of that time, yet it takes place in a supposedly African country.

Everything Apartheid on YouTube is pretty weird. The old 80s adverts on there barely have any black people in them, even in the background. There used to be a lot more TV clips on there from that era but a lot of them got removed for some reason a few years ago. There was one from some old tabloid newspaper promising to name and shame SA politicians with "coloured" ancestory. A very odd time in history indeed.

I'll admit though I do love the fantastically dirty 80s theme tunes to the news programmes above.

There's a great section in the DDR Museum in East Berlin which gives some examples of old communist shows. You can really understand why everyone was pointing their ariels west.

This thread is right up my street though sadly I can't imagine too many other FMs will feel the same and I can see it fading into obscurity fairly soon.

Hope not.

I did Cold War history at Uni and things like the former Yugoslavia and East Germany and the way they did television is actually interesting.

Also interesting, from whats been shown already is apartheid SA - historically speaking!

Keep the clips/ pics coming, that all I can say.....

Here some Apartheid-era South African TV commercials (all from the 1980s -- South Africa famously had no TV at all until 1976 and advertising was only introduced several years later):



And some (older) South African radio commercials (as heard on the commercial radio station Springbok Radio):

A foreign affairs magazine from Soviet TV, late 1970s?:



National weather forecast from Soviet TV, 1975:



The main Soviet evening news, 1977 (as previously seen in The Newsroom):



Soviet TV, end of the day's transmissions, with a note reminding viewers to turn off their TV sets (no sound), 1990:

A sample South African TV schedule from 1978, when there was still only one channel:

http://www.allatsea.co.za/retropics/tv26june78.jpg

Source: http://www.allatsea.co.za/nostalgiatv.htm , where you can find more schedules from that week.



Here's that commercial:



Since many South African newspapers were more liberal than the Apartheid-era government, this all may have been done to expose hypocrisy, much like a newspaper today might "out" a secretly gay person who makes homophobic statements in public. Maybe someone more familiar with South Africa could tell us more.

And from 1984, here's a South African commercial for Telefunken TV sets:



(BTW, Telefunken was a German company that is perhaps most well-known for having developed the PAL color system.)

Sponsored clock, station ident, and the late news from ATV's English-language service in Hong Kong, when HK was a British colony (1983):

As seen on the state broadcaster in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, fragments of the closing ceremony of the Los Angeles Olympics, 1984: