Television Presentation From Defunct Countries and Regimes

YouTube user briantw1 has re-uploaded part 1 of the above newscast:



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Here's a Soviet commercial for a multi-band radio set:



And one for an electric shaver:

As you may know, OIRT's Intervision was Eastern Europe's equivalent of the EBU's Eurovision television exchange. Here are various slides used by Eastern European broadcasters for their Intervision transmissions:



However, Yugoslavia was not a part of the Soviet Bloc, despite being communist, so JRT (the umbrella organization of Yugoslavia's various broadcasters) was an EBU member:

A South African commercial for a bank, 1985 (and I even see two black people in the background!):

A test pattern from Iraqi television during Saddam Hussein's rule, 1998:



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The fall of the Berlin Wall as seen on ZDF's Heute Journal in West Germany that evening. You'll see a clip of the official announcement from East German TV ( Aktuelle Kamera was their flagship newscast) at the beginning:

They certainly enjoyed making full use of their name captions in the West!

Actually, those name captions were added by the person who uploaded the clip. The original was presumably a "clean" copy (without lower-thirds).

Oh. Well in that case, they certainly didn't enjoy making full use of their name captions in the West.

This is what ZDF's own lower-thirds looked like at the time:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/az2si/zdf-captions-1989_zps118610a3.png

The news from TV Skopje, Skopje, SR Macedonia, Yugoslavia, 1989:



Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o_dRVDdZv4
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdqQczwluLg

English-language TV listings from pre-revolutionary Iran, 1969 and 1970:

http://gallifreybase.com/w/images/thumb/b/bc/Iran_Ch3.JPG/652px-Iran_Ch3.JPG

http://gallifreybase.com/w/images/9/9b/NITV.JPG

http://gallifreybase.com/w/images/9/9e/NITV_2.JPG

http://gallifreybase.com/w/images/2/2b/IranDW70.JPG

Source: http://gallifreybase.com/w/index.php/Main_Page (in accordance w/ that site's Creative Commons license)

Excellent clips. But blimey, I know I don't speak German but from what I can see German TV's reporting of the fall of the Berlin Wall was incredible dull for such a historic event. Long, extended reads to camera, politicians in suits rather than the excited public. Odd.

Iranian TV's also fascinating. A bit like BBC1 but with Iranian music instead of Top of the Pops...

German TV has historically been rather formal with official voices rather than ordinary people dominating the news. However, this particular clip was recorded not long after Guenther Schabowski made his historic -- but initially unclear -- announcement. As far as I know, the crowds only began to gather at the wall after this newscast. In fact, according to Wikipedia, the crowds started to flock towards the Wall in response to ARD's late night news, Tagesthemen .

Says Wikipedia:

Later that night, on ARD's Tagesthemen, anchorman Hans Joachim Friedrichs proclaimed, "This is a historic day. East Germany has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone. The GDR is opening its borders ... the gates in the Berlin Wall stand open."[40][72] After hearing the broadcast, East Germans began gathering at the wall and at the six checkpoints between East and West, demanding that border guards immediately open the gates.[72] The surprised and overwhelmed guards made many hectic telephone calls to their superiors about the problem.

In other words, the footage that we now associate with that historic night happened afterwards.