Television in Poland in the Nineties. An Overview

Tomasz Mielczarek

This artele provides an analysis of the transformation of television in Poland in the 1990s, The Autor claims that although the Act About the Radio and Television was passed by Parliament in 1993, it has been amended almost ten times by the year 2000, An important contribution to the adjustment of the Polish legislation to that in the Europen Union was made by the National Council for the Radio and Television. In the last ten years the number of radio and television operators has significantly increased. Apart from public television a few private nation-wide are active, e,g, Polsat TV and TVNas well as a dozen regionai and local operators, Theoffer is supplemented by a several dozen Polish-language channels broadcast from abroad by satellite, Public television is still under a considerablpressure of politicians, but is programmes are not politically biased and they are "Americanized". The competion to win morę audiences, due tocommercialization of television in Poland, hasdecreased the value of offered programmes, wichhave become morę banal and trival, In spite of this,television in Poland is the basic means of mass communication, and the average viewing time is almost 4 hours daily.

KEYWORDS

public media, public television, commercialization