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Panoptikum nr 20 (27) 2018
168
Telewizje narodowe
1. Socialist television studies: revisiting the single narrative approach
Over the past thirty years, media and television studies have come a long
way: from becoming adiscipline of study, forming their own methods and meth-
odologies up to encompassing various other disciplines and spanning across all
continents. Nevertheless, the vast majority of existing work on television stud-
ies remained, for along period, restricted to American and Western European
academic centers and traditions, and developed mostly in reference to capitalist
/ democratic television – television systems fueled by and entrenched in capitalist
/ democratic1 economies. However, during recent years, the study of European
televisions has rediscovered socialist television, and we have witnessed arapid rise
in scholarly interest in anew field of research: socialist television studies. Sabina
Mihelj, one of its pioneers, points to the topicality of socialist television stud-
1 The extent to which these two terms overlap – capitalist (mostly negative connotation) and democratic
(positive connotation) – outreaches the scope of this study. Though, we should take into account
two seminal elements in the history of European television: firstly, the rejection, in Europe, at least
until the 1970s, of many capitalist features of American (commercial) television; secondly, the recent
discovery (precisely within Socialist television research) of amuch more porous split between Western
and Eastern television networks.
Alexandru Matei
“Ovidius” University of Constanţa, Romania
Annemarie Sorescu-
Marinković
Institute for Balkan Studies, Belgrade, Serbia
The exceptionalism of Romanian
socialist television and its
implications
Panoptikum 2018, 20: 168-192. https://doi.org/10.26881/pan.2018.20.11
169
The exceptionalism of Romanian socialist television and its implications
Alexandru Matei, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković
ies: “Until well into the second half of the twentieth century, the vast majority
of producers and audiences around the world had experienced the medium of
television in the context of non-democratic or, at best, semi-democratic political
regimes. Socialist television studies are particularly well equipped to address the
specificities of television cultures in non-democratic political contexts” (Mihelj
2014: 7).
Today, socialist television studies are in full swing. Recent years have seen the
publication of aresearch monograph and several articles on socialist television
in general (Imre 2016, Mihelj 2014), of several monographs on national socialist
television, out of which some in English (Bren 2010, Roth-Ey 2011, Gumbert
2014, Evans 2016), others in different European languages (Ivanova 2005, 2006,
Matei 2013), and of several edited collections of studies on television and broad-
casting in authoritarian Europe, all in English (Bönker / Obertreis / Grampp
2016, Badenoch / Fickers / Henrich-Franke 2013, Goddard 2013). Today, there
are many papers available on this topic, most of which have been published in
VIEW. Journal of European Television History and Culture, but also elsewhere.2
On the whole, this recent body of literature presents two main new insights as
compared to previous studies in the field of the history of Western television: on
the one hand, it shows that European television during the Cold War was less
heterogeneous than one may imagine when considering the political, economic
and ideological split created by the Iron Curtain; on the other hand, it turns to
and capitalizes on archives, mostly video, which have been inaccessible to the
public.
In avery short period, the bi-polar model of commercial (Western) televi-
sion / public service (Eastern, socialist) television, which dominated at the very
beginning in this field and was deeply entrenched in the persistence of Cold War
thinking, with its sharp East / West divide, has been overcome and nuanced. In
what can be seen as amanifesto for the field, Mihelj identifies two other key is-
sues of the new discipline, apart from overcoming Cold War binaries: 1) distinct
but interrelated political, cultural and economic rationales of socialist television
(mixing its ambivalent status with the impact on audiences); and 2) overcoming
“the prevalence of methodological nationalism in the field by embedding the
story of socialist television in the narrative of multiple modernities and multiple
visions of progress” (Mihelj 2014: 7).
The interactions between Western and socialist mass culture are highlighted
mainly with respect to the most popular TV programs: fiction and entertain-
2 The most recent special issue of European Journal of Cultural Studies is devoted to aconnected topic:
Memory, Post-Socialism and the Media, see Mihelj 2017.
Panoptikum nr 20 (27) 2018
170
Telewizje narodowe
ment. As Sabina Mihelj states, scholar research in the socialist television field
“challenges the perception of the socialist period as a‘deviation’ from the suppos-
ed ly normal course of historical development, and instead highlights continuities
between post-1945 cultural histories and long-term historical trends, including
the rise of modernity, popular sovereignty, and mass culture” (Mihelj 2011: 510).
Afew years later, in TV Socialism, the first monograph which tries to show
how socialism and television function(ed) as awindow into each other, Anikó
Imre (2016) points to three elements of the “defamiliarization” effect of histo-
rians’ contact with socialist television: 1) the ambivalent political and cultural
status of television; 2) socialist audiences; and 3) transnational history. Given the
“lower cultural status” of this new media, television escapes censorship, while, in
need of an audience, television management (often embodied by superior party
levels) has to produce and broadcast entertainment, making television aleisure
medium. Imre emphasizes the importance of audience studies and contends that
a‘bottom-up momentum’ in cultural policies encompassed the entire history of
socialist television. In addition, she claims that the history of socialist television
is atransnational history, as it has to comply with international and transnational
flows documented by UNESCO (see Nordenstreng / Varis 1974).
Nevertheless, the new picture which this recent research reveals does not uni-
formly cover all former socialist countries. If socialist television studies try to lev-
el post-war Europe, they expose other hidden breaches, such as the one between
one group of Central European ex-socialist countries (Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
Poland, GDR) and the South-Eastern ones: Albania,3 Bulgaria,4 and also, to
some extent, Romania and Yugoslavia.5 However, assessing inequalities within
the frame of socialist television scholarly research does not invalidate its achieve-
ments, but helps us realize that socialist television is not such ahomogeneous
field of study as it seems at first sight. Naturally, as television in former socialist
European countries has just come under scholar scrutiny, time is required to
legitimize it and including socialist television into asingle narrative is the best
way to attain its legitimacy.
Indeed, socialist television history is part of the ‘new Cold war history’ –
“ahistory informed by multi-archival research and written from amultilateral
perspective, free from the distorting lens of the bilateral relationship between
the two superpowers” (Crump 2011: xv). Research on socialist television makes
3 Any information about this country, whose national television was inaugurated as late as 1968, is
conspicuously lacking from social television studies.
4 The first article in English on Bulgarian socialist television was published last year, see Marinos 2016.
5 In this latter case we talk about afederal republic, with several state television channels.
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Alexandru Matei, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković
one seminal assumption: that television in Eastern Europe was not mere political
propaganda, in complete contrast with that of Western, democratic European
television. Rather, we have to encompass the whole of European television when
approaching socialist television, as there are many commons stakes.6
Television has to be looked at from the point of view of cultural, political and
economic dynamics on anational, international and global level, but at the same
time as aconstellation of systems, with cores and peripheries (Wallerstein 2004,
Matei 2017). Thus, if socialist television’s history is aperiphery of its kind of the
larger European television system, it is also true that socialist television has its
own peripheries. What we should do, as researchers, is pay equal attention to all
the parts and dynamics of such asystem and engage in contacts with those areas
which are less known.
The tremendous effort undertaken by the scholars involved in socialist televi-
sion studies has opened avast field of investigation. The mixture of historical,
sociological and communication approaches has already succeeded in changing
the common view on the effects of the Iron Curtain. As television was defined
as aflow (Williams 1972), and the “Thaw-Era” coincided with the beginning of
European television, there is no wonder that East and West do not seem today as
divided as they were presented in the 1980s (see Tismăneanu 1988).
In what follows we show how and why socialist Romania was similar but, at
the same time, different from the rest of the Eastern Bloc countries and in what
way this influenced the development of Romanian television (TVR – Televiziu-
nea română). This will add to abetter understanding of the unique character of
Romanian television within the frame of European socialist television, but will
also facilitate acomparative approach with other countries of the European pe-
riphery whose television is less well-known.
2. Why was socialist Romania different?
The last few years saw aheated debate within Romania’s intellectual circles
on the public phenomenon of exceptionalism of today’s Romania. It was fueled by
the 2013 publication of the essay Why is Romania different ?, signed by the well-
known Romanian historian Lucian Boia (2013). While Boia has been labeled
and praised as the myth buster of Romanian historiography, this essay appar-
ently does the exact opposite: it sanctions (from an allegedly academic position)
the (negative) myth of the country’s inborn exceptionalism. What Boia does is
6 See Bourdon 2011 on the political influence upon television 2011, Fickers 2010 on the “techo-politics
of colour”, Imre 2016 on the importance of cultural policies before WWII etc.
Panoptikum nr 20 (27) 2018
172
Telewizje narodowe
induce the idea that Romania is aunique case in the world or at least in Europe.
Elements of this exceptionalism, according to Boia, are: the fact that the Roma-
nian people are the only Latin people who formed and developed in the Slavic
part of the European continent (“aLatin island in aSlavic ocean”), Romanian is
aRoman language with the most diverse and mixed borrowed vocabulary, the
Romanian principalities showed up incredibly late on the map of Europe, when
the neighboring countries already had ahistory behind them; there is almost no
information about Romanians before the 13th century; the Romanian Middle
Ages started when they were already f inished in the rest of Europe; this historical
delay caused the Romanian society to fall behind the rest of Europe and remain
for very long in a rural traditional frame; Romanians are the only Christian
Orthodox people who have followed the Slavic culture for avery long time, were
then infused with Greek culture, just to make asharp cut with the East, in the
19th century, and take over, at the elite level, Western cultural and political mod-
els etc. According to Boia, apart from these slow and multiple historical accumu-
lations, Romania’s exceptionalism is due to the mindset of Romanians, defined
by their proverbial passivity and negativism, lack of positive attitude, apathy and
political opportunism.
While the essay has certain stylistic qualities and is far from lacking in asci-
entific approach, it aroused fierce debates and heated discussion, being accused
of superficiality in its approach, cynicism, lack of empathy with the object of
study, vulgar simplification, extreme bias, banality, methodological deficiency,
epistemological questionability, by the authors of the volume Why is Romania
like this? The avatars of Romanian exceptionalism (Mihăilescu 2017). Denouncing
the temptations of exceptionalism, Romanian anthropologist Vintilă Mihăilescu
shows (from asimilar academic posture) that Romania’s exceptionalism does not
have, in fact, anything exceptional, in the sense that it has never been an excep-
tion in the European ideological field, something never heard of, but an “ideologi-
cal mixture, tailored up of Western ideas so that it fits the local client” (idem: 50).
Mihăilescu makes salient in his book the thin distinction to be noticed with-
in exceptionalism: “Exceptionalisms are never true – and we have to put them
in their right place when they have exceeding pretensions; at the same time,
they can often be correct, when they are political strategies […]” (Mihăilescu
2017: 51). However, it seems that most of the authors included in this collection
of studies agree, more or less, to the fact that Romanian communism presented
several features that distinguish it from other socialist regimes in Europe.
For almost half acentury, Romania was a communist country, not differ-
ent from the other communist countries in Europe or in the world, as commu-
173
The exceptionalism of Romanian socialist television and its implications
Alexandru Matei, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković
nism everywhere starts from the same founding texts and adheres to several basic
principles. However, inasmuch as communism permitted adegree of divergence
within its limits, Romanian communism had aseries of unexpected evolutions
and divergences. Thus, the country with the smallest number of communists be-
came the state with the biggest communist party; the mostly rural Romania took
on apath of extreme and rapid urbanization (however, Romania has not over-
come its demographic situation, being the least urbanized European country by
the end of the communist regime); arather ethnically diverse state after WWI,
it was “Romanianized” to such an extent as to number almost 90% Romanians
at the fall of the communist regime; the anti-nationalist communism from the
beginning ended up by being ultra-nationalist; asociety hardly touched by the
communist ideology became so profoundly communist that it had the hardest
time in breaking up with communism of all the other countries of the Eastern
Bloc; Romania invented the dynastic dictatorship, similar only to that in North
Korea; the ideological commitment of Nicolae Ceauşescu, unique among other
East European leaders, was to continue the pace of industrial modernization
at the cost of the Stalinist promise of meeting the basic needs of all; Romania’s
position was singular in Eastern Europe as regards the Warsaw pact; the country
with the seemingly weakest communist opposition overturned the regime with
the bloodiest revolution in Europe etc. (Ban 2012, Boia 2016).
In what follows, we will briefly review several factors which added to the
uniqueness of Romanian communism and, consequently, decisively influenced
the evolution of Romanian television under the communist regime, as we will
see further.
2.1. Urbanization
At the beginning of the 1960s, Romania was still amostly rural country, the
least urbanized society of all socialist national societies. But with the advance of
communism, the pace of industrialization and urbanization rapidly increased.
The appearance of towns changed greatly, when their most important element
became the block of flats, multiplied by the thousand. Collectivization trans-
formed acertain part of Romanian peasantry into an agricultural proletariat,
while industrialization absorbed asignificant mass of this rural population. On
the one hand, the poorly built, crowded, identical buildings were supposed to
host the large numbers of peasants transformed overnight into factory workers,
town dwellers cut-off from the village but not truly integrated into urban life.
On the other hand, the urbanization drive was in most cases superficial: afew
blocks of flats and utilities available only in the center of aformer village sufficed
Panoptikum nr 20 (27) 2018
174
Telewizje narodowe
to change its administrative status into atown. We have to emphasize, however,
an important point concerning the socio-cultural status of those newcomers (for-
mer peasants transformed into factory workers) within the context of television
reception: during the 1960s, most of them remained commuters between their
village homes and the peri-urban factories they were working in (see Crowther
1988). In the 1980s, Ceauşescu was also planning to complete his urbanization
plan by dissolving villages completely and transforming them into urbanized
settlements, which never happened in the end.
2.2. Cultural traditions and historical liabilities
A strong French and German elite cultural tradition mitigated by apost-
WWII anti-Nazi propaganda propelled an already two-century-long French cul-
tural influence (Drace-Francis 2016: 47), as soon as the first signs of the “Thaw-
Era” appeared, in 1963-1964. AFrench television news magazine feature asserts
that in the Popular Republic of Romania, once Russian language lessons ceased
to be compulsory in schools, French became the foreign language chosen by two
thirds of Romanian pupils, from 1963 onward (Cinq colonnes ala une, 1964).
This ref lected not only on literature (see Baghiu 2016), education and language
borrowings, but also on the burgeoning showbiz (see the pop music international
festival Cerbul de Aur (The Golden Stag), 1968-1971, see Matei 2013).
On the other hand, although Romania moved to the Soviet side in 1944, it
was nevertheless considered an overpowered nation and had to pay war debts
to the Soviet Union. France, another European “exception”, especially during
the De Gaulle regime, shared with Ceauşescu’s Romania, during the first half
of his regime, some similar features: rigid presidential rule, nationalistic policy
as acounterpart to American / Soviet imperialism (associated with collaborative
projects with the opposite superpower), powerful state engagement to emanci-
pate individuals through high culture elements and exceptional cultural claim
in context. We can say that France was immersed into an “Anglo-Saxon” larger
context, while Romania, into alarger “Slavic” one (Matei 2014). In both cases,
television was not mainly an entertainment media (which is true for any other
socialist country), but mostly as an educational / cultural / propagandistic tool.7
Even if much of Romanian television programs was devoted to entertain-
ment (48.2% compared to 36% in Yugoslavia, in 1970, see Ivanova 2007: 123)
7 One “exceptionalist” terminological and cultural feature of Romanian television programs within the
socialist television network is implicitly offered in Anikó Imre’s book: while in Hungary, Poland and
East Germany entertainment programs were labeled as cabaret (aFrench mass culture item of the 19th
century imported and used in Germany), in Romania they have always been known as variétés (Rom.
varietăţi), the same as in French (Imre 2016).
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The exceptionalism of Romanian socialist television and its implications
Alexandru Matei, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković
at the beginning of the 1970s, the new ideological drive of the 1970s and the cut
of daily broadcasting in the 1980s drastically reduced this percentage.8 On the
other hand, as innovation and format import were banned from the mid-1970s,
TVR’s programs became duller and duller. This is partially shown by audience
surveys and, even more, by the disappearance of these surveys during the 1980s,
as well as by the drastic fall in television magazine sales during the 1980s: from
1.05 million copies sold during the 1970s, TVR sold 0.78 million in 1983 and
less than 0.4 million in 1986 (see Graphic 1). Similarly, the number of TV sub-
scriptions fell in 1983 for the first time, to be followed by asteady decline until
the end of the communist regime.
Graphic 1. TVR broadcasting magazine circulation (millions) [1980-1987]. Source: SRR Archives.9
2.3. Ethnic identities
Ethnic issues were obvious at the beginning of communist rule in Romania.
The “non-Romanians” had the largest share in the communist party and even
in its leadership, partly due to the ethnically mixed composition of Romania,
8 For the ratio of propaganda and entertainment during a1971 Sunday program on TVR, see Matei
2013: 110.
9 SRR Archives (Arhivele Societăţii Române de Radiodifuziune – Archives of the Romanian Society of
Radio Broadcasting).
Panoptikum nr 20 (27) 2018
176
Telewizje narodowe
partly to the fact that “non-Romanians” were fitter than Romanians to put into
practice the communist “internationalist”, anti-national project.
Of all the other socialist countries, except for Yugoslavia, which was afederal
republic, Romania was the most ethnically heterogeneous state. The center of
the country was dominated by anon-Romanian population, the “autonomous
Hungarian region”, which would only disappear in 1968, when the regime began
its social policies of ethnic homogenization. These included mass emigration of
ethnic groups, first the Jews, then the Germans and Hungarians. The “Romani-
anization” of Romania was also the result of heavy industrialization and urbani-
zation, which displaced alarge part of the rural population, which was mostly
Romanian, and resettled them in the multi-ethnic towns and cities. Thus, if in
1930 ethnic Romanians made up 71.9% of the country’s population, at the end
of the communist period their share reached 89.5% (Boia 2016: 88).
This process of homogenization was paralleled by astrong nationalistic stance
in public culture, of which television was meant to be the vehicle. Hungarian
and German programs started being broadcast in 1969 (seemingly as apersonal
initiative of Nicolae Ceauşescu, see Matei 2013: 148) and were cut off in 1985, as
an effect of the drastic cuts in TV broadcasting.10
2.4. Geopolitical status
Romania had the (bad) luck to only be surrounded by socialist countries.
The only possible territorial menace came from the Soviets, but no ideological
danger could come from beyond its frontiers. However, when the seclusion im-
posed by Ceauşescu’s regime became extreme after the 1980s, Romania’s neigh-
bors, especially Yugoslavia, became a“window to the West”, in that their more
liberal regimes were “balancing between the sought-after communist control
and a flirt with capitalism” (Vučetić 2012). Romania’s exceptionalism was to
be proved once more: this communist country, initially unwilling to embark on
the communist path, surrounded by other communist states, would be the last
one to overthrow the regime. While the surrounding states were slowly softening
their authoritarian regimes, Romania was becoming ever more secluded in its
communist ideology. As TVR became one of the main channels of communist
propaganda, losing all other functions by the 1980s, Romanians were viewing
the television broadcasts of the neighboring countries, which could easily be
watched in the border areas and further .
10 Teodor Brateş, former director of TVR’s news department, believes that one of the reasons for these
broadcast cuts was precisely the fact that Ceauşescu wanted to have ajustification for eliminating the
Hungarian and German programs (Alexandru Matei, personal interview with Teodor Brateş, 2016).
177
The exceptionalism of Romanian socialist television and its implications
Alexandru Matei, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković
2.5. Personal dictatorship
Nicolae Ceauşescu distinguished himself from other communist heads of
states from the Eastern Bloc in a number of noteworthy ways. From today’s
perspective, his personality cult is one of the most fascinating and horrifying
chapters of Romanian history, which has attracted the interest of many research-
ers (Durandin 1990, Cioroianu 2004, Burakowski 2011, Marin 2016) and can
only be compared to that of Enver Hoxha in Albania (Tismăneanu 2012). If
Ceauşescu was a popular and credible leader at the end of the 1960s, after his
brave move from 1968 (condemning the Warsaw pact and the military interven-
tion in Czechoslovakia), the next 20 years only turned the man whom Roma-
nians genuinely trusted into a mere caricature. Absolute ideological commit-
ment would have been impossible without apersonal dictatorship in which all
important decisions were taken, after 1974, by only one man, the president. Not
surprisingly, at the climax of his personality cult, at the end of the 1980s, Nicolae
Ceauşescu was much less popular in Romania than before he became the object
of this blind idolatry (Cioroianu 2004, 2010).
At the end of the 1970s, when Ceauşescu’s personality cult started off, it
also played the role of resistance towards Moscow: he was to replace Stalin in the
political imagery of the Romanian Communist Party. However, his cult also had
roots in Romanian history, in the person of Carol the Second during the inter-
war period. Finally, after his 1971 visit to China and North Korea, Ceauşescu
also adopted the Asian model, being deeply impressed by the dynastic commu-
nism of the Asian countries (idem, Ban 2012).
The progressive accumulation of power in the hands of Nicolae and Elena
Ceauşescu, already on its way in 1974, after the former became the first Roma-
nian president and his wife was appointed amember of the Central Committee,
explains much of the peculiar turn taken by TVR by the mid-1970s, which in
the 1980s intensifies down to near catastrophe.
3. Exceptionalism of Romanian socialist television
Romanian television’s history cannot be assessed without taking into account
these five crucial elements which made the Romanian socialist regime unique in
the Eastern Bloc. TVR was launched on 31 December 1956 (and was combined
at that point with the radio). If the period from the mid-1960s until the end of
the 1970s was the “Golden Age” of TVR, with diversifying genres, television
reporting, investigative journalism in full swing and a second channel added
in 1968, by the end of the 1970s, TVR had entered its dictatorial phase, which
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178
Telewizje narodowe
lasted throughout the 1980s, when programs became politicized and were only
made to please the dictator Ceaușescu. The diversity of genres was reduced to
political programming and broadcast content became scarce. The second chan-
nel was shut down in 1985, as were the local stations of Romanian television.
At its beginning, the development of Romanian television was undermined
only by the first aspect: few technical competencies to be exploited. Shortly after
that, TVR flourished under the authority of several leading Jewish personali-
ties.11 In 1965, when Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, the former Communist leader,
died and Ceauşescu came to power, television coverage was 40% of Romanian
territory and membership was still low: 500,000 or 3% of the Romanian popula-
tion, with ahigh imbalance between urban and rural regions and between the
country’s provinces. In the years to follow, with the advancement and consolida-
tion of Ceauşescu’s rule, TVR would undergo profound changes, which would
grant it aspecific profile amongst the televisions in Europe.
Important research, done mainly by Dana Mustata, attempts to integrate Ro-
manian television into the bigger picture of European socialist television (2012
a,b). There has been little interest though in documenting the effects of what
has been recently labeled (and criticized) as Romanian “exceptionalism” upon
Romanian socialist television industry and culture. In achapter of Mihăilescu’s
volume on the exceptionalism of Romania, entitled At the border of empires, at the
crossroads of worlds. ARomanian geopolitical exceptionalism, Valentin Naumescu
brings to attention the revival of former traditional cultural borders within post-
Iron Curtain Europe: Central Europe tried to recover its traditions and, in 1991,
Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia founded the Višegrad group. Naumescu
suggests that “this sub-regional project” aimed at attracting rapid Western eco-
nomic investments, but was also pointing at an “implicit separation from Bulgar-
ia and Romania (poorer countries, with bad images in the West, whose transition
start was delayed)” (2017: 77).
As concerns the relative scarcity of research on socialist Romanian and Bul-
garian television, Namuescu’s argument may stand. On the other hand, it does
not explain how national Romanian exceptionalism could have affected tele-
vision. As figures will show, at the beginning of the 1960s, Romanian televi-
sion was relatively more developed than its Bulgarian counterpart. But, as time
passed, the situation reversed: by the 1970s, the Romanian television network
was poorer than that in Bulgaria; its material basis in Bucharest grew more dys-
functional and its technical involution made it lag behind all other European
11 Personal interview of Alexandru Matei with Sanda Ţăranu, former TVR presenter, 2012.
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The exceptionalism of Romanian socialist television and its implications
Alexandru Matei, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković
television networks as far as the beginning of color television broadcasting is
concerned.
In other words, if at the beginning of European socialist television history the
Romanian official channel could easily be embedded into this larger picture (the
year of the first public broadcasting, television genres, new headquarters built in
the 1960s), it gradually slipped out of it as Ceauşescu’s regime became more au-
thoritarian. This exception is to be seen mainly, but not exclusively, as the result of
Ceauşescu’s personal repeated interventions in state media policies, as his belief was
that television was totally inefficient as amobilization means to an austere economi-
cal and moral day-to-day social regime. On the other hand, the cultural gap between
abackward rural society and asmall urban elite, specific to interwar Romania (see
Butoi 2017), prevented alarger diffusion of television culture until the late 1980s,
when this culture no longer relied on what the national channel was allowed to
offer to its public (see Sorescu-Marinković 2012). While differences between rural
and urban cultures have always existed in the European periphery, in Romania they
were bigger than elsewhere. And while nationalisms were active in each of the for-
mer socialist countries, trying to prevent television inter- and trans-national flows,
the Romanian national-communist regime took all these to the extreme.
3.1. Urbanization and television
Rapid, but superficial urbanization, the 1968 administrative reform which
completely modified the structure of the country (from 16 regions to 40 counties)
and the need for popular support led to what now seems to be the beginning of
Romanian mass culture. International tourism, acinema industry, glossy maga-
zines, international music and film festivals, more porous frontiers – all these laid
the foundation of aproto-consumer society in Romania between 1963 and 1968.
1968 is the year when TVR made some major achievements: new functional
headquarters (built between 1967-1970, but planned in 1964), more broadcast-
ing hours, the launching of asecond channel available only in the Bucharest area,
an international pop music festival in Brașov, international film co-productions,
televised foreign language classes (Russian, but also French, English, German,
Italian). Still, the membership was one of the lowest in Europe, and the lowest
among the other socialist states (except for Albania): 9.35/100 compared to the
second lowest figure, Bulgaria, where the ratio was 15.88/100 (Matei 2013: 221).
The evolution of these figures shows how Bulgaria’s and Romania’s television
networks changed last place in Europe between 1965 and 1968: Romania had 26
memberships per 1,000 people in 1965, while Bulgaria had 22 , whereas in 1968
the order is already reversed: 56/1,000 in Romania and 70/1,000 in Bulgaria (see
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Telewizje narodowe
Ivanova 2007: 122). During an interview with one inhabitant of avillage in the
heart of Romania (Gorj department), aformer technician remembered that his
first TV set was bought in 1969, not that he didn’t have enough money to buy
one earlier, but because the village hadn’t been connected to the national electric-
ity network12.
Astill fragile urbanization, combined with the rural origin of most of the new
party apparatus, whose members were controlling television, starting with Ceauşescu
himself, prevented most cultural programs from becoming popular. According to the
data from Oficiul de Studii şi Sondaje (The Office for Studies and Polls),13 in 1972, for
example, the permanent audienceof TVR above 15 years of age was 5 million (33% of
the entire population above 15 years of age). The rural population, which represented
59.5% of the entire population of Romania, made up 34.3% of TVR audiences, while
the urban population (40.5% of the total) made up 65.7% of TVR audiences.
The 1970s witnessed the rise of a new huge social class: young commuter
peasants, who were employed in the newly built factories. They would work
there in the morning, to go back home in the afternoon and continue work-
ing in their households. By the 1980s, most of them were already living in the
outskirts of cities or in small towns, after access to the main cities was restrict-
ed.14 However, most of them had to wait until the 1990s to watch television,
very expensive in the 1970s and very dull in the 1980s. What they would have
wanted – modern music, blockbusters, quizzes and reality programs etc. – only
became available after 1995. Except for popular movies (even three per week in
those years), Western series, traditional folk music, blunt Romanian comedies
(e.g. Nea Marin – Uncle Marin) and children’s programs, television culture was
rather high culture for them.
3.2. Cultural traditions, historical liabilities and television
The period 1968-1975 represented the golden years of TVR, as we have
already mentioned. Aformer press official – in Paris after 1960, Tudor Vornicu
– designed the entire entertainment program after 1965. Valeriu Lazarov, the
first outstanding Romanian television entertainment producer, left the coun-
try before 1970, first for Italy, then for Spain. Vornicu might have been aSecu-
ritate (Romanian state security) agent (see Matei, 2012) and his political power
probably made him the major representative of aleisure television, aposition
12 Alexandru Matei, personal interview conducted in August 2017
13 SRR Archives.
14 According to Decree no. 68/ 17 March 1976, published in the Official Gazette or Romania, no.
24/20 March 1976, 14 Romanian cities, labeled big cities, banned any resettling in their territory.
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Alexandru Matei, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković
which he kept until his death in 1988. His TV productions during the grey
1980s, mainly light news magazines and entertainment weekend broadcasts,
gave birth to TV stars and were the most interesting, with growing audiences.
During these years one can notice asimili-synchronization of national mass
culture with major western trends (mostly European): the appearance of pop,
but also some rock and jazz music, of youth movements (hippy) etc. But TVR
was stubbornly aiming at diffusing high culture: theatre, concerts, camera mu-
sic and opera, literature and fine arts, theoretical debates – generally very dull,
but informative.
According to asurvey from 1973,15 audiences asked for: 37% more daily mov-
ies (Romanian, American, Indian and French), 27% more popular music, 12%
more entertainment (and more series, especially more realistic Romanian series),
7% more news magazines. As far as the preferences of the audiences were con-
cerned, the top four were: 1) movies and series, 2) Tel een cic lope dia (aDiscovery
style show), 3) Varietăţi (Varieties), and 4) Reflector (Spotlight, news magazine
about social and economic flaws), while the last places in the top of preferences
were shared by: 1) Viaţa satului (Village Life): 17% in 1973 (see Matei 2013:
315), 2) Tele-school and foreign language classes (Russian and German), 3) news
magazines on politics and ideological debates.
Another survey from 1972 presents the Romanian population educational
and audience structure. Thus, 90.5% of the entire population had elementary
education and it made up for 63% of the audience; 7.2% possessed ahigh school
diploma and made up 27% of the audience; while 2.3% had auniversity diploma
and made up 10% of the audience (SRR Archives).
On the basis of the various data made available by the surveys, we can say that
television in socialist Romania was more high/medium culture than popular me-
dia16, with peasants and workers being the social categories possessing the fewest
television sets, while housekeepers, retirees, clerks and intellectuals possessed the
largest number of television sets.
Even though part of the television content was accused of being vulgar or
obscene in formal or informal meetings, comments or TV chronicles,17 the en-
tertainment TV programs of the 1970s are considered nowadays astandard of
15 Barometrul audienţei în luna ianuarie (Audience barometer in January), SRR Archives.
16 The structure of the broadcast supports this assessment: symphonic concerts, opera and operette,
theater were rather frequent, while popular urban music was not so popular in the 1960s, when more
than 60% of Romanians lived in the countryside (Udrea 2014).
17 The genre of TV chronicle appeared in 1963, and its most well-known author is aJewish Francophile
journalist still alive, who directed the magazine Cinema from its inception in 1963, up to 1989:
Ecaterina Oproiu.
Panoptikum nr 20 (27) 2018
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Telewizje narodowe
good taste. Though moral and aesthetic values change over time, we should add
that television entertainment was even then more conservative: very little jazz or
rock music, only one quiz, very scarce political satire. Part of broadcast satire was
directed at stifling avant-garde art and promoting ahealthy way of living. TVR
had only one popular quiz, Cine ştie continuă (Who knows goes on), which only
transferred from radio to television in 1973 and was cancelled shortly after, when
Ceauşescu forbade television formats involving material prizes.
By far the most resounding success was by American series. Given the good
economic relations with the US governments,18 TVR could buy American series
much more cheaply than its neighbors from the Eastern Bloc.19 American series
could be broadcast until the early 1980s: in the 1970s Dallas became the most
widely watched television program in Romania, with more than 90% of the
audience watching it.20
3.3. Ethnic issues and television
Starting with 1969, the year of the 10th Communist Party Congress, TVR
also broadcast in Hungarian and German, in an attempt to rally all ethnic
communities within the nation (of course, the Roma were the big absentee
from the picture). The idea of broadcasting in Hungarian and German was also
meant to emphasize an internationalist communist commitment that Ceaus-
escu tried to minimize during his regime. However, these programmes were
ahighly propagandistic mixture of news magazine and high culture (theater,
visual art, traditional or classical music). The Hungarian language program
had 150 minutes, while the German one had 105 in 1972, at their acme. How-
ever, Hungarian and German programs were never broadcast in prime time.
These programs were suspended in the 1980s as Romania was escalating na-
tionalism and the Warsaw Pact was losing substance. Teodor Brates thinks
that one of the reason for the dramatic cuts in broadcasting begun by early
1985 was precisely the violent anti-Hungarian stance of Ceausescu himself.
Hungary was permitted by Gorbachev to host refugees from Transylvania21,
18 Romania was awarded the Clause of most favored nation in 1975, but the reason for the advantages in
buying American movies was the close relationship between the two states.
19 Mihai Bujor Sion, General Manager of the Television Committee in the early 1970s, stated in 1972:
“The license fees we pay for feature movies are very low within the international market, from 1/2
to 1/10 compared to other fees socialist televisions have to pay” (The meeting of the TVR National
Council, September 1972, SRR Archives).
20 The most watched cinema movie in the 1970s was an Indian one (Câmpeanu 1979).
21 Antenne 2 broadcast on 12 May 1988 afeature about Romanians from Transylvania (most of them of
Hungarian ethnicity, but not all) going to Budapest. There is also an interview with Cornelius Rosca,
the founder of the Free Romania organization whose task was to integrate Romanian immigrants in
Hungary. INA Archives.
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Alexandru Matei, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković
while most Germans had already left the country, some of them being “sold”
by Ceauşescu.22
3.4. Geopolitical status and television
At the beginning of the 1980s, when broadcasting of the Romanian television
was cut down to three, then to only two hours daily, and communist propa-
ganda was ubiquitous, altering all the programs, more and more people started
watching the television programs of the neighboring countries. Thus, near the
state borders, watching Bulgarian, Hungarian or Yugoslav television became
amodus vivendi, a way of escaping the isolation and self-sufficiency imposed
by Ceauşescu’s politics, of piercing the imaginary Iron Curtain separating com-
munist Romania from the rest of Europe (Mustata 2013b, Sorescu-Marinković
2011, 2012). Yugoslav television was the most liberal and had the most diverse
program. Furthermore, its strong signal covered the entire Banat region, higher
areas of Transylvania, as well as part of Muntenia and Oltenia, where it over-
lapped with Bulgarian television. Ex-Yugoslavia was in-between the Eastern so-
cialist world and the capitalist democratic one, asemi-periphery of its kind, in
Wallerstein’s terms, or the territory of Coca-Cola socialism (Vučetić 2012), so that
there is no wonder that its television programs enjoyed more freedom than those
of its socialist siblings.
Watching the “bourgeois” television programs of neighboring countries was
afrequent phenomenon in the border zones of the Eastern Bloc. Western televi-
sion (and before television, radio) helped Eastern Europeans to compare their
living standard with the much higher one in capitalist countries. This way, the
foreign TV audience got used to the functioning of democracy and experienced
afreedom unknown in communism. In the long run, the programs of Western
television supported pro-democratic attitudes and undermined public support
of communism (Kern / Hainmueller 2009: 379). The transnational flow of in-
formation which the radio, and later the television enabled played an important
role towards the end of the communist period and encouraged the process of
democratization. It is widely believed that the Western media greatly contributed
to the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe (Nye 2008).
For example, the Germans in GDR regularly watched the programs of FRG
television (Kern / Hainmueller 2009, Kern 2011, Grdešić 2014), while on the other
side of the continent Finnish television was introducing Estonians to the colorful
world of entertainment and consumerism, teaching them about Western values and
22 More in the documentary Trading German s by Răzvan Georgescu, 2014.
Panoptikum nr 20 (27) 2018
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Telewizje narodowe
encouraging them to dream of abetter future (Lepp / Pantti 2012: 76). In Enver
Hoxha’s Albania, the television of the neighboring countries (Italy, Greece and Yu-
goslavia) were, in the 1980s, almost the only connection between the extremely
isolated Albanian society and the rest of the continent. Even if watching foreign
television was forbidden and punishable in Albania, it became amass phenomenon
in the border zones of this socialist country. After 1973, signal jammers were in-
stalled in the border regions of Albania, but in most cases their effect was minimal
(Idrizi 2016). As far as the practice of watching foreign television in socialist Ro-
manian is concerned, what sets Romania apart is the amplitude and spread of the
phenomenon, which led, among others, to extensive language acquisition (Sorescu-
Marinković 2011).
Dana Mustaca notices that in 1982 Romania’s public architecture completely
changed, when TV antennae started popping up on the roofs of the buildings,
when the broadcast of the World Cup from Spain was forbidden (Mustata 2013b:
156). Surprisingly, this practice was tacitly accepted in Ceauşescu’s Romania,
where the Securitate controlled everything: “The public space of the country
remained clear of suppressive measures against reception of foreign television, as
well as of any (functional) infrastructures obstructing foreign radio signal com-
ing into the country” (idem: 157). ATVR document dated 4 July 1982, entitled
Information concerning the reception of foreign television programs in the territory of
our country, includes amap made by the Securitate that year. The map shows the
“reception zones” in Romania where watching foreign TV was possible (idem:
162, Figure 2). Anote has it that in the south of Romania 6-8 million people
were watching Bulgarian TV, in the south-west, 3-4 million people were watch-
ing Yugoslav TV, while the Romanians in the North and East of the country
were watching Soviet TV. According to that document, Yugoslavia had the high-
est number of transmitters sending asignal into Romania.
3.5. Personal dictatorship and television
Already from the beginning of the 1970s, the incipient cult and dictator-
ship of Ceauşescu, his conservative personality and preferences, Romania’s au-
tonomous policies within the Warsaw Pact and astricter nationalistic stance in
cultural policies prevented TVR from following the same development pace as
before. Instead of quizzes, TVR launched an amateur cultural program called
Carmen Patriae, whose name was shortly after changed into Cântare Patriei
(Song [of praise] to the country) and then, in 1976, into Cântarea României
(Song [of praise] to Romania). This was the initiative of Ceauşescu, who was
increasingly discontent with the new television ethos.
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Alexandru Matei, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković
In the aftermath of Ceauşescu’s visit to China in 1971, he initiated acul-
tural revolution in Romania. Until then, television had fallen under the direct
control of the Radio and Television Committee of the Council of Ministers,
agovernment organ which ensured that television broadcasting complied with
the socialist ideology. In March 1971, however, the Radio and Television Com-
mittee became the National Council of Romanian Radio and Television, whose
composition was to be decided by both the Council of Ministers and the party’s
Central Committee (Mustata 2013a: 111).
With the occasion of the 10th Congress of the Romanian Communist Party,
in 1969, Ceaușescu accused TVR’s programs of lacking seriousness. Afew years
later, during ameeting with the TVR management in August 1976, he expressed
blatant annoyance regarding the special television program for the Romanian
National Day (August 23rd). Hestated accusinglythatduring such aspecial day
thereshouldbe no room for movies or series, which he considered no more than
mere schedule filling since nothing better was produced: “Even if we had had
five channels, they should have all focused on August 23rd! (…) You should show
the most important events. This has to be the television’s program! (…) Movies
take too much time during evening slots. Watching moviesis the least interesting
Graphic 2. Broadcasted TV hours per year (thousands) [1965-1973].
Panoptikum nr 20 (27) 2018
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Telewizje narodowe
activity for the critical mind”.23Ceaușescu railed again againstRomanian televi-
sion and media in 1979, during the 12th Congress of the Romanian Communist
Party (Matei 2013: 265, 301). One could think that Ceauşescu criticized only
the conspicuous inability of Romanian television producers to create relevant
content, which was probably the case in the beginning, but not later. Ceauşescu
was in fact discontented with the presumed incapacity of television to become
the perfect medium for education and culture.24
When Aniko Imre states that, by the end of the 1960s, television audiences
were already using television as a leisure media (2016: XXX), she implies that
everyone was aware of its status, party members included. What made the differ-
ence in the Romanian case was the almost exclusive command of the Ceauşescu
couple in virtually all Romanian affairs. Television ceased to be of any value for
them in the 1970s, when the number of broadcast hours started dropping (see
23 File no. 40/1976, Executive Bureau of TVR National Council, Section Central Committee of the
Romanian Communist Party, Romanian National Archives.
24 Ştefan Andrei, Foreign Affairs Minister under Ceauşescu’s dictatorial regime (1978-1985), mentions
that, when asked why he had ordered adramatic rescheduling of television programs, Ceauşescu
answered:“It’s true, we could add some hours daily, but you don’t do education and culture with the
help of television, only through reading, shows and exhibitions. In television, sports shows produce
the highest audience figures” (Andrei / Betea 2011: 143).
Graphic 3. Broadcasted TV hours per year [thousands] [1980-1987]
Source: SRR Archives
187
The exceptionalism of Romanian socialist television and its implications
Alexandru Matei, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković
Graphic 2). At first, the low status and popularity of television could be blamed
on underinvestment. New headquarters were lacking, color television was still
waiting, the extension of the second channel did not meet plans, the amount of
programming did not evolve, entertainment stagnated.25 By the beginning of the
1980s, TVR’s parameters were roughly the same as ten years before. And, when
major economic and political crisis started, Ceaușescu almost suspended it. From
almost 5500 hours in 1981, programming dropped continuously, down to 1548
hours in 1987 (see Graphic 3).
4. Implications
The first major implication of the above-mentioned “exceptionalism” factors
was the transformation of Romanian television in the 1980s, into the most ab-
surd mass-media institution in Europe, as it broadcasted 20-30 hours aweek
(less than in 1965), most of which was black and white (aunique case across
Europe)26 and devoted itself to the activities of the presidential couple. Even if
the rise of Ceauşescu’s personality cult, which peaked in the 1980s, was probably
the main trigger for this dictatorial phase of Romanian television, the economic
crisis the country was experiencing at the time should not be understated, ei-
ther (Mustata 2013a: 107). Economists have already showed how the Romanian
economy shrank during the 1980s (Ban 2011, Murgescu 2010), but what strikes
most during TVR’s history under Ceauşescu’s regime is its stagnation as early
as the mid-1970s. Without new headquarters (which TVR’s staff requested in
vain, as the ones opened in 1968-1970 were meant for producing around 50
hours weekly),27 without implementing color television, without having consist-
ent quizzes (as Ceauşescu despised the idea of giving material prizes to the win-
ners), TVR faced underdevelopment long before the Romanian economic crisis.
Between 1958 and 1989, TVR went through four stages of evolution (or,
more precisely, involution): 1) the romantic phase (1958-1965), characterized
by rarity, experiments and shows; 2) the expansion phase (1965-1973), marked
by socialization, everyday life, mass culture; 3) the phase of compromise (1974-
1982), where ideology and entertainment were in afragile balance; and 4) the
25 At the meeting of the TVR National Council from September 1972, Mihai Bujor Sion declared:
“Ihave to say that the chances of getting more people are minimal. (...) We know all the figures
from all the radio-television stations in Europe. The number of people is related to the broadcasting
hours. You start from 20 people per hour and you can even reach 128. We have afigure of 20”, SRR
Archives.
26 Many people would place a (rainbow) colored glass screen in front of the TV set in order to get
aglimpse of what it would be like to watch color TV.
27 See Color Television File, in SRR Archives.
Panoptikum nr 20 (27) 2018
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Telewizje narodowe
agony phase (1983-1989), marked by the ubiquity of Ceaușescu’s personality
cult, where we can only speak about TVR survival or, with maybe amore apt
metaphor, hibernation. Hence, if we take into account the stagnation of the
regime, begun in the mid-1970s, there are 15 years of hard times for astill new
cultural industry. But from the view point of television audiences, satellite anten-
nas, strong coverage of the neighboring television channels and VCRs diffusion
changed television watching into a clandestine, but tacitly permitted practice
(Mustata 2013b). This was also the moment when television culture lost its sup-
posed political impact. Anti-communist messages came from radio stations like
Free Europe or the Voice of America, not from television.
The second major implication of these factors that made Romanian socialist
television unique in the Eastern part of Europe is the period of the early 1990s,
after the Romanian Revolution of December 1989. Upon the fall of the com-
munist regime, after almost 15 years of freezing, TVR found itself unable to
move forward. Thus, it just resumed its cultural and social vision from the mid-
1970s. The year 1990 was neither the end of the calamity, nor the beginning of
another Golden Age. In the first five years after the Romanian Revolution, TVR
accomplished what it could not do in the 1970s: entire color broadcast (even in
1989, programs were broadcast in “partial color”, meaning that only newsreel
focusing on Ceauşescu’s public life were broadcast in color, together with studio
live broadcasting), second channel revival and coverage of the whole country
(the second channel was terminated in 1985), rapid extension of the schedule
and the introduction of avant-garde pop music. Of course, sexual images could
now be shown as well. Apopular quiz appeared later, RoBingo, whose presenter is
now one of the best known television stars in Romania. But all these Romanian
novelties were already obsolete for European television. In an attempt to resume
its 1970s projects, TVR fell back upon its tele-school broadcasts and foreign lan-
guage classes, one of its innovations at the end of 1969, while old news magazines
lived asecond life: Reflector, Transfocator, A Smile on 16 mm (a sort of lighter
version of candid camera), together with the varieties program and the Golden
Stag festival. Practically, TVR was acting like avisitor from the past who had
landed in the future and decided to ignore everything that had happened in the
meantime.
This backwardness prepared the scene for commercial television, which of-
ficially arrived in Romania in December 1995 and literally swept away TVR’s
audiences. The authors of this study themselves remember watching PRO TV
for days, the first of the Romanian commercial TV stations, as if television had
been born anew.
189
The exceptionalism of Romanian socialist television and its implications
Alexandru Matei, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković
Acknowledgements:
This research was conducted within the project TNSPE (Télévisions et na-
tions en «semi-périphérie» européenne: comment constituer une identité nation-
ale par la télévision (1958-1980). Etudes de cas: la Roumanie, la Bulgarie et la
Belgique), financed by PN 3 / Sub-3.1 Bilateral / Multilateral/ Module AUF-RO,
2016-2017 and by Agence universitaire de la Francophonie.
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The exceptionalism of Romanian socialist television
and its implications
During recent years, the study of European televisions has rediscovered social-
ist television, and we have witnessed a rapid rise in scholarly interest in a new field
of research: socialist television studies. On the whole, this recent body of litera-
ture presents two main new insights as compared to previous studies in the field
of the history of Western television: on the one hand, it shows that European
television during the Cold War was less heterogeneous than one may imagine
when considering the political, economic and ideological split created by the Iron
Curtain; on the other hand, it turns to and capitalizes on archives, mostly video,
which have been inaccessible to the public. The interactions between Western
and socialist mass culture are highlighted mainly with respect to the most popu-
lar TV programs: fiction and entertainment.
The authors give us an extraordinary landscape of the Romanian socialist
television. Unique in the Eastern part of Europe is the period of the early 1990s.
Upon the fall of the communist regime, after almost 15 years of freezing, TVR
found itself unable to move forward.
Słowa kluczowe: socjalistyczne studia nad telewizją, Rumunia, telewizje na-
rodowe
Keywords: ocialist television studies, Romania, national tv
