Radiotelevizija Slovenija - History

History

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

On 1 April 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 11 November 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. The color program broadcasting started in 1966. During that decade, the amount of programming produced exclusively for Slovenian audiences increased substantially. On 15 April 1968, the main evening newscast was broadcast in the Slovenian language 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. However, it enjoyed huge popularity in many parts of Italy. There, RAI still had a monopoly on television, so many Italians eagerly tuned into the new Yugoslav station, which broadcast mostly in color. 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.

During the 1970s, TV Ljubljana's main service was also gradually converted to color. In 1984, teletext was introduced, whereas the digitalization started in 1986. In 1989, 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 dramatically.

A year before Slovenia's independence in 1991, the institution was renamed to Radiotelevizija Slovenija (from RTV Ljubljana). On 1 January 1993, RTV Slovenija was admitted as a full active 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 12 November 2005 a law was passed stating that Radio-television Slovenia is "a public institution of special cultural and national importance..."

In May 2008 TV Slovenia began to air new TV channel – TV Slovenija 3 for live Parliament coverage. In August 2008 TV Slovenia broadcasted first HD event – Olympic Games 2008 on test DVB-T channel. The Slovenian public broadcaster law referendum, 2010 was rejected by voters. In 2011, analogue signal was abandoned.