75 years of radio and 45 years of television

Arne Wessberg, the EBU President, and Jean Stock, the Secretary General, represented the EBU at the celebrations in Maribor to mark the 75th anniversary of radio and the 45th anniversary of television by RTV SLOVENIA.

In response to the speech by Aleks Stakul, the Director-General of RTV SLOVENIA, the EBU President stressed that public service radio and television was a part of modern life, through the role they played in production, diversity and programme distribution.

This anniversary is being celebrated just six months before Slovenia joins the European Union but, well before this application to join, RTV SLOVENIA has been fulfilling its role as public service broadcaster by transmitting its programmes throughout Europe via the EBU.

For example, in 2002 an average of one news item daily was transmitted from Slovene television over the Eurovision network as part of the EVN exchanges (316 for the year as a whole) and 71 concerts were transmitted from Slovenia the same year for broadcast by the Euroradio network.

Slovenia also plays a very active role in the decision-making bodies of the EBU. Boris Bergant, the Deputy Director-General of RTV SLOVENIA is also one of the Vice-Presidents of the EBU.

In 2002 RTV SLOVENIA proposed a total of 23,698 hours of radio programmes and 13,573 hours of television programmes to its audience.