Fairly speaking: Fees for Czech Television are going up. The current director has been demonstrating what a qualitative decline looks like for months.

Among the shows that had to pay for being low-cost as early as the 1970s, more or less run-of-the-mill detective shows, worn-out knowledge competitions, and ridiculous morning shows stand out here and there. If someone considers StarDance to be commercial entertainment that does not belong on public television, compared to the current standard of this channel, it is extremely high-quality, generously conceived, and elaborated television entertainment (regardless of the fact that it is only copying according to the rules of the borrowed shows).

If it's not clear to someone, how to imagine current trends on ČT1, or they only sit down to the television screen when launching the expensively paid Netflix, they can for instance try the currently offered show David, Molavcová, Mládek, Zagorová from the year 1983. Stars of the normalisation era will show what was filmed in times when there wasn't even room for proper editing. The main thing is that viewers were sitting in the armchairs of state flats, not thinking about the political confusion of the era.

Luxusní loft na prodej 2+kk, Praha Modřany, Praha 4

Show property

Increasing fees for Czech Television is like trying to make an old car more expensive

Watching a similar show is certainly incredibly educational, but is it a suitable advertisement for the extensive campaign of the current general director of Czech Television Jan Souček for increasing licensing fees? For example, when Škoda increased the price of their flagship model Octavia, the carmaker's representatives started to present it as a car with one foot in a higher class. They did not start telling customers that it was the same car as in 1996 when it started to be produced.

It's not exactly a comparable business and it's clear that inflation is realistically reducing the budget of Czech Television, so the station recycles old archives to save money. Relying largely on the stupidest of their own production as a part of savings strategy is somewhat peculiar.

On the contrary, the news channel ČT24 still maintains a high quality. A diverse array of modern series and films, which can be watched on the modern platform iVysílání, is offered by ČT2 and ČT Art. An example can be the recently broadcasted Norwegian series Exit about the lives of local millionaires. We won't encounter such an original piece elsewhere in the country.

Czech Television still offers something extra, worthy of licence fees, or a special tax that is to be increased. Its advocates then emphasise that the fees have not been raised since 2008, which in reality means a much smaller budget.

The situation we thought was long buried is now resurfacing with the CT fees

But in the mentioned 17 years, times have significantly changed. Sports broadcast fans couldn't choose from a wide range of sports-focused television stations, and internet broadcasts were almost nonexistent. Today it's a completely normal thing. Do these people need to pay extra TV taxes for broadcasts of the second leagues, since CT no longer has money for the top competitions?

The role of ČT is today simply completely different than in 2008 and it is appropriate to discuss whether television could not fulfill it not with a larger, but on the contrary with a smaller budget. Private TVs have long replaced ČT1, focusing on fallen and primitive television entertainment, which definitely has its place in culture. ČT Sport, with a bit of exaggeration, can be replaced by a mobile phone streaming regional sports matches.

Independent news or investigative journalism, on the other hand, remains in the public interest. One investigative journalistic program was inexplicably canceled in a cost-saving measure. A scandal recently emerged involving product placement for a clinic owned by the opposition leader in the stale program Sama doma.

The increase in the monthly fee is accompanied by the stench of political sycophancy across the political spectrum. The fifteen-crown increase in the television fee, is by no means the biggest item on the account for the survival of half of Czech Television, which should have remained buried with its share of the normalization entertainment chaos of the 70s and 80s.

Sources: author's text, comment, x.com, seznamzpravy.cz, CT