Radiotelevizija Slovenija

History

Radio Ljubljana signed on the air for the first time on September 1, 1928, with experimental broadcasts. By October 28 the radio station had a scheduled programme. On April 11, 1941, the station's transmitter in Domžale was destroyed and the station was occupied by Italy.

On April 1, 1949, the first TV laboratory was established in Ljubljana, but was separate from the radio station. However, the task of setting up a television service was eventually assigned to Radio Ljubljana. Second radio program started in 1951. On November 11, 1958, the TV channel got a regular schedule, but it was shared by other Yugoslav republics, with TV Ljubljana getting around 30% of airtime. TV Ljubljana produced its first broadcast for Eurovision, showing ski jumping in Planica, in 1960. During that decade, the amount of programming produced exclusively for Slovenian audiences increased. On April 15, 1968, the main evening newscast was broadcast in Slovene for the first time. It had previously originated in Belgrade and was produced in Serbo-Croatian.

In 1970, the RTV Slovenia record label was established. In 1971, TV Koper/Capodistria, a subsidiary of RTV Ljubljana, was launched as the first bilingual TV station in Slovenia, serving the Italian community in Slovenia and Croatia. Private companies built transmitters and translators in various parts of Italy that made TV Koper-Capodistria (generally known as "Telecapodistria" in Italy) available to millions of Italians. Because the station used the PAL color standard, Italians bought PAL TV sets in large numbers, ending the hopes of the French government that Italy might adopt its SECAM system instead. With the advent of privately owned, purely commercial television in Italy, the station's popularity eventually began to diminish.

Starting from 1974, TV Ljubljana's main service was also gradually converted to color. In 1981, they aired the children's television series 40 Green Elephants. In 1984, teletext was introduced, whereas the digitalization started in 1986. In the 90s, Radio Ljubljana started transmitting an RDS signal.

At first, TV Ljubljana's second television network primarily relayed programs from other Yugoslav television stations. In the late 1980s, however, the percentage of TV Ljubljana's own programs on the second network increased.

In the year when Slovenia became independent in 1991, the institution was renamed Radiotelevizija Slovenija (from RTV Ljubljana). On January 1, 1993, RTV Slovenija was admitted as a member of the European Broadcasting Union following the collapse of Yugoslavia, and began participation in the Eurovision Song Contest.

In the mid- to late 1990s, TV Slovenia began to face increased competition from Slovenia's commercial television stations. In 1995, RTV Slovenija published its first web page. Radio digitalization started in 1995, whereas the digitalization of television broadcasting started in 1999.

In 1997, satellite broadcasting started via Hot Bird 3. In 2001, RTV Slovenija's Multimedia Centre was established to help introduce new technologies. A new multimedia web portal was introduced in 2002. This portal includes regular news updates, broadcast archives, and the live transmission on line of most services, both radio and television. RSS feeds were introduced in 2005. The public broadcaster referendum, 2005 was approved by a slight majority of voters, but the referendum saw a very low turnout. On November 12, 2005, a law was passed stating that Radio-television Slovenia is "a public institution of special cultural and national importance..."

Radio services

National

RTV Slovenija's national radio networks are based in Ljubljana and broadcast in Slovene. They can be heard throughout Slovenia.

Prvi program (first programme): A traditional generalist service carrying news and news reports, a variety of specialized broadcasts, and a wide range of music

Radio Val 202: An indie-pop oriented service with the emphasis on pop and rock music, news bulletins and updates, talk segments, lifestyle reports, and live sports coverage

ARS: A cultural service concentrating on classical music, radio drama, and other cultural programming

Legal framework

The 1994 Law on RTV Slovenia regulates public broadcasting. RTV Slovenia has a Programming Council and a supervisory board; RTV is required by law to be independent and autonomous, to respect human integrity and dignity in its programs, to observe the principle of impartiality, and to ensure the truthfulness of information and the pluralism of opinions and religious beliefs. The law also requires the public broadcaster to provide radio and TV programs for the Italian and Hungarian minorities in Slovenia.

After EU accession, the new 2005 Law on RTV Slovenia reintroduced a dominant role of the state and the executive in the appointment of RTV's governing bodies, excluding civil society institutions (e.g. universities, association of writers, and sports organisations) which were previously involved. The draft law raised several domestic and international criticisms, including from the International Federation of Journalists and the Council of Europe, but the Slovenian institutions dismissed most of them and went along with adopting the new law in November 2005, which was later narrowly confirmed by 50.7% of voters in a special referendum.

The current governance system of RTV Slovenia allows control over almost all managerial bodies and over the appointment of all key editors to the governmental majority. Majority parties also control the majority of the new Programming Council and supervisory board of RTVS, thus being also able to appoint RTVS' Director General, who will in turn appoint and manage the directors of radio and TV, the editors-in-chief, and the senior management. This governance system is deemed a threat to the independence and credibility, trust, and respect with the public of RTV Slovenia by the European Journalism Centre. The following period indeed saw a host of cases of political interference in the editorial and journalistic work of the Slovenian public broadcaster, whose public credibility (particularly for the TV) fell dramatically.

The Varuh pravic poslušalcev in gledalcev ("Listener and Viewer Ombudsman") of RTV Slovenia was appointed for the first time in 2008, according to art.16 of the RTV Slovenia Law, to "address the comments and suggestions of viewers and listeners" and "give instructions to the director-general regarding changes that must be effected on channels."