Television in Omdalia
Television is the main source of media in Omdalia. Broadcasts started on September 19, 1955.
As the country has become increasingly nationalist since 2013, there has been a high level of criticism regarding the way television works in Omdalia, with more media becoming pro-government and more than half of the free-to-air terrestrial channels are allocated to Omdalian Radio and Television. The gratest coup was in the 2011-2013 period, where the former Progressist government sacrificed TVO 1 in an attempt to end the bipolarization of state-run TV, forcing ONT to take over the role; whereas starting in 2013 the terrestrial television market has adopted more conservative practices than the ones practiced since the 90s. Omdalia is currently trying to revert the trends in all aspects of social life, especially after the annexation of the bankrupt Jaherian state.
History[edit | edit source]
1955-1964[edit | edit source]
Television started in an abandoned warehouse in New Constitution on September 19, 1955 at 20:30. In a city of over 2 million people at the time, the broadcasts were being received by some 400 people. The state-run Televizija Omdalija was created the year before and broadcast from said transmitter. A northward expansion started in March 1956, by 1960 the signal had reached the entire country.
The new service was funded from the onset by commercial advertising and grants from the government. Initially it was a government enterprise with 40% belonging to the predecessors of Naprirad, 50% to Omdalian Radio and the remaining 10% to private creditors. Omdalian Radio was directly controlled by the government and gave them the decisions of what was acceptable and what was not.
By 1962 Naprirad had left the stocks and sold its 10% to the government. A daily schedule started at 19:00 and ended at 00:00 on weekdays. On weekends it started at 16:00. Educational television started in September 1963, inspired by the Ashtalaian method of relying on teachers, rather than the Flarlandian method of showing filmed programming.
1964-1977[edit | edit source]
The second channel controlled by the government started in a similar way to the first one, despite broadcasting on the same band, it wasn't available to everybody. Eventually a supplementary UHF network was created.
TVO named its channels Program Piedni and Program Drugi (First and Second Program - at the time many Eurectipherian countries called their state-run TV channels as "programs"). Daytime broadcasts on Program Piedni (later TVO 1) started in 1965 running from 12:45 to 14:15. The second channel ran for about three hours a day starting at 20:00 and relied mostly on repeats of filmed programming and the news.
Color broadcasts started in 1972, using the PAL format. Because of the Flarlandian technological influence, PAL would be adopted in its neighboring Ashtalaia in 1973, and oficially days after the 1974 coup. Before Ashtalaia started color broadcasts it filmed color programming. A few television series were shown in color on Omdalian television first before being shown in Ashtalaia in such format.
1977-1987[edit | edit source]
A group of private investors occupy the 19:00-20:00 and 21:00-22:00 slots of TVO 2, by then broadcasting in the two bands, and creates Nacijonalna Pravdova Televizija (National Truthful Television). The channel was created as a loophole from the investors that ran TVO. This annoyed TVO 2's controllers and the government decided in January 1979 that the service was going to be spun off as Nacijonalna Privatna Televizija (National Private Television), using a mix of spare and used VHF frequencies across the country. UHF wouldn't become the norm until 1985.
