This collection of essays responds to the recent surge of interest in popular television in Eastern Europe. This is a region where television’s transformation has been especially spectacular, shifting from a state-controlled broadcast system delivering national, regional, and heavily filtered Western programming to a deregulated, multi-platform, transnational system delivering predominantly American and Western European entertainment programming. Consequently, the nations of Eastern Europe provide opportunities to examine the complex interactions among economic and funding systems, regulatory policies, globalization, imperialism, popular culture, and cultural identity.This collection will be the first volume to gather the best writing, by scholars across and outside the region, on socialist and postsocialist entertainment television as a medium, technology, and institution.
Part 1: Popular Television in Socialist Times
1. Television Entertainment in Socialist Eastern Europe: Between Cold War Politics and Global Developments Sabina Mihelj
2. Adventures in Early Socialist Television Edutainment Aniko Imre
3. Television in the Age of (Post)Communism: The Case of Romania Dana Mustata
4. The Carnival of the Absurd: Stanisław Bareja’s Alternatywy 4 and Polish Television in the 1980s Dorota Ostrowska
5. An Evening with Friends and Enemies: Political Indoctrination in Popular East German Family Series Katja Kochanowski, Sascha Trültzsch, Reinhold Viehoff
Part 2: Commercial Globalization and Eastern European TV
6. From a Socialist Endeavour to a Commercial Enterprise: Children’s Television in East-Central Europe Kati Lustyik
7. Intra-European Media Imperialism: Hungarian Program Imports and the Television Without Frontiers Directive Timothy Havens, Evelyn Bottando, and Matthew S. Thatcher
8. To Be Romanian in Post-Communist Romania: Entertainment Television and Patriotism in Popular Discourse Adina Schneeweis
9. Quest for Viewers: How Polish Broadcasters Employ American TV Series in Competition over Audiences Sylvia Szostak
Part 3: Television and National Identity on Europe’s Edges
10. Big Brothers and Little Brothers: National Identity in Recent Romanian Adaptations of Global Television Formats Alice Bardan
11. The Way We Applauded: How Popular Culture Stimulates Collective Memory of the Socialist Past in Czechoslovakia – the Case of the Television Serial Vyprávěj and Its Viewers Irena Carpentier Reifová, Kateřina Gillárová, Radim Hladík
12. Coy Utopia: Politics in the First Hungarian TV Soap Ferenc Hammer
13. Why Must Roma Minorities Be Always Seen on the Stage and Never in the Audience? Children’s Opinions of Reality Roma TV Annabel Tremlett
14. Racing for the Audience: National Identity, Public TV and the Roma in Post-Socialist Slovenia Ksenija Vidmar-Horvat
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