TVR (TV network)

Even though it does not have the largest audience, due to the dominance of the five private TV networks (which consistently get higher ratings in the urban market segment), it offers a wider variety of services, including webcasts and international viewing via TVRi.TVR was established in 1956 in the capital city of Bucharest and had its first broadcasts on New Year's Eve, 31 December, from a little building (a deserted cinema studio) on 2 Molière Street.TVR2 was suspended in 1985, due to the "energy saving program" initiated by Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989) and TVR1 became TVR again, becoming the only television station in Romania at the time, until the Romanian Revolution in 1989, corresponding with the fall of communism in the remaining Eastern Bloc countries that same year.TVR would remain a propaganda instrument in the hands of the newly created National Salvation Front (FSN), made up mostly of former second-rank Communists.The FSN used TVRL, by far the most widely penetrating information source at that time in Romania, to discredit protesters who were demanding a Communist-free government, denigrating them as "fascists".On January 1, 1993, TVR, as a part of Radioteleviziunea Româna (RTVR), was admitted as a full active member of the European Broadcasting Union, simultaneously with the merger of OIRT and EBU.In an unusual move at the time of the 1996 Romania general election, TVR offered a tractor to the districts with the highest rural turnout in each of the seven regions.A few months later, on October 1, TVR 3 was launched, which broadcast local programming, airing shows and news produced in the various regions of Romania.[8] The EBU had issued a deadline to the Romanian government requiring it to make satisfactory arrangements to repay the debt by 20 April, or else face exclusion from the contest.Two days later it announced that, following the government's failure to meet the deadline, the EBU had withdrawn all member services from TVR: these included – in addition to TVR's participation in the Song Contest – access to the Eurovision News and Sports News Exchanges, the right to broadcast specific sporting events, and entitlement to benefit from the EBU's legal, technical, research, expertise, and lobbying services.In October 2007, during its prime-time newscast, TVR aired a video showing Agricultural Minister Decebal Traian Remeș allegedly taking a bribe.