Television Presentation From Defunct Countries and Regimes

Let's hope the dear leader doesn't get upset over the pillarboxed letterboxed picture.

For those who understand German, here's a 2008 documentary about the history of Aktuelle Kamera, the main East German TV newscast:

Obligatory recommendation of Good Bye, Lenin! for those of you that haven't seen it.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Bye,_Lenin!

Lots of Aktuelle Kamera in it.

A map showing the Western occupying forces' low-powered TV services in West Berlin, each with a transmitter in its sector, 1984:


Source: Claus Grimm, Twitter

BFBS is the British Forces Broadcasting Service, and AFN is the American Forces Network. The French apparently had a direct relay of TF1's domestic service.

According to the lovely page below the three allied stations were on-air until ~1994 when the masts were turned off. The French frequency (channel 31, FFB) was left unused, while the AFN-TV frequency was taken over by VOX and BFBS was replaced by a low-power broadcast of BBC World from Alexanderplatz.
http://funk.breloehr.de/berlin.htm

There's a bit more on French television in Berlin in this Wikipedia article. Apparently, TF1 was briefly replaced by Antenne 2 before the frequency was given to TV5.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_forces_fran%C3%A7aises_de_Berlin

Thanks, Thinker!



Although it doesn't say that in the article, I suspect the switch from TF1 to Antenne 2 and TV5 had something to do with the fact that TF1 was privatized in 1987.

Here is more about the TV system in white-ruled Rhodesia from the book Broadcasting in Africa (Temple University Press, 1974):

"RBC owns and operates all radio services; in the case of television it owns the transmission facilities but contracts for programming with a private commercial company, Rhodesia Television Limited. RBC's ultimate control is assured, however, by the cat that it owns 51% of the stock of the program company."

"Rhodesia Television Limited leases transmission facilities from RBC under a contract running through 1979. Facilities at the outset of 1972 included transmitters at Salisbury [present-day Harare] and at Bulawayo, in the southwest, with a third transmitter planned for Umtali, in the east, by the end of the year. The contractor handles television sales through a subsidiary company and turns over a portion of the receipts to RBC. The programs are all in English."

"In response to the sanctions invoked by the United Nations following UDI, the United States government banned the export of television programming to Rhodesia, except for news and documentaries. However, foreign distributors who market American programs evaded the ban. Thus the 1971 program schedule listed such American feature films as Valley of the Dolls and such syndicated series as 'Mission Impossible,' 'Mannix,' and 'Halls of Montezuma.'"

"The equipment is of British origin, so that it is difficult to obtain replacements and to expand upon the existing facilities. The press once discussed the desirability of introducing color television but dismissed it as something to be considered only if sanctions were lifted."

I recall that at least at the start of RBC's service, there were completely separate schedules for Salisbury and Buluwayo. Presumably there was no link between the two transmitters, and separate studios existed. Buluwayo generally ran episodes of film series a week after Salisbury. I have no idea whether the News was the same in both places, but was presumably read by different newsreaders.

Interesting! Australia and New Zealand are two other sparsely populated countries whose television was purely local at first, with no links between stations in their various population centers. News footage and other programming had to be flown or driven from city to city. Wikipedia describes the logistical problems this caused when major news stories broke in New Zealand:

"The most notable example of the unlinked facilities was when the inter-island ferry TEV Wahine sank in Wellington Harbour on 10 April 1968 – newscasts of the disaster had to be transmitted over Post Office lines by WNTV1 to AKTV2 in Auckland. However, due to the storm disrupting both shipping and flights for a further 24 hours, the first video of the sinking crossed Cook Strait via regular transmissions from WNTV1 and was received on a privately owned television set in Blenheim, at the top of the South Island some 80 km line-of-sight distance from Wellington. A Blenheim based news reporter's film camera was pointed at the television, then the exposed film was rushed by road to Christchurch, developed and transmitted over CHTV3, concurrently sent further south to DNTV2 for transmission there via a coax cable link."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Broadcasting_Corporation

In late 1969, the New Zealand stations were finally linked to each other and the NZBC's first national newscast was launched. In Australia, however, the main evening newscasts remained state-based even after their stations were linked.

That's a really fascinating read, thanks.

What was originally a logistical issue turned into a unique feature of Australian television in comparison to the US or UK with the evening newscasts of Seven, Nine, Ten and ABC remaining primarily local. Never knew that to be the cause.

We're getting OT, but here's a nice clip about how NZBC brought pictures of the moon landing into New Zealand homes and then spent the following months linking the country together properly.

Also worth remembering that the moon landing pictures were received at Parkes in Austraila, there's
an excellent account here:-

http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/

And it's also well worth watching the movie, 'The Dish' which relates the story as a light-hearted drama/doc

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/