Television Presentation From Defunct Countries and Regimes

From 1994, here's a short English-language documentary about RIAS (Radio in the American Sector), an important Cold War-era radio -- and later television -- service that broadcast from West Berlin but was primarily intended for audiences in East Germany.

Part 1:



Part 2:



If you're interested primarily in RIAS's television operations, which didn't get started until the late '80s, you can skip to that point by following this link:

http://youtu.be/D-BJw0W-E6c?t=5m19s

And here are some images of RIAS through the years:

http://www.sundgren.se/1-recreation/2-radio/qsl/1971-02_rias_fr_2000px.jpg
Image: sundgren.se

http://www.riasberlin.de/rias-hist/rias-hist-post/rias-post-pic/posWelle492-lg.jpg
Image: riasberlin.de

http://www.peterglowasz.de/s/cc_images/cache_2420681045.jpg?t=1336278972
Image: peterglowasz.de

http://www.radiotreff.de/rias2/p/f_team_3.jpg
Image: radiotreff.de

http://www.radiotreff.de/rias2/p/f_funkhaus_aussen_6.jpg
Image: radiotreff.de

http://www.radiotreff.de/rias2/p/f_artikel_programm.jpg
Image: radiotreff.de

http://www.radiotreff.de/rias2/p/l_sendezeichen.jpg
Image: radiotreff.de

And an anti-RIAS poster from East Germany [corrected from earlier]:

http://www.hdg.de/lemo/img/galeriebilder/geteiltesdeutschland/vorsicht-rias-gift_plakat_DEUS-G-2-006.jpg
Image: hdg.de

("Gift" means "poison" in German.)

The English-language news from TVB Pearl in colonial Hong Kong, 1977:



Here's a description of the Hong Kong television landscape of that era from Timothy Green's book The Universal Eye: World Television in the Seventies:

"In Hong Kong the control of television by the British authorities is more subtle. The worry is not so much program content as limiting the viewers. The policy is that the programs should not be seen by people in Communist China just a few miles away. The delicate diplomacy of keeping this toehold on the Chinese mainland apparently dictates that the Chinese should have no grounds for complaining that their population is being bombarded with Western propaganda.

"The British company, Rediffusion, started a closed-circuit English-language commercial channel in 1957, which has developed into the world's largest cable system. Rediffusion added a Chinese channel in 1963 and by 1971 more than 110,000 Hong Kong homes were hooked directly into their cables. This closed-circuit network ensured no viewers over the border in China but, in 1967, the Hong Kong authorities relaxed enough to allow the establishment of a conventional commercial station, TVB, with English and Chinese channels; the English channel is christened Pearl, the Chinese is Jade. Although all the directors of TVB are local businessmen, NBC and Time-Life from the United States and Anglia and Thames from Britain hold shares in the station."

Here are various TVB idents from the colonial era:

Some more material from Apartheid-era South Africa...

Commercials from 1987:



And a newscast from the same year:

The South African Apartheid-era tv is creepy.

A Yugoslav-era commercial for Cockta, a Slovenian cola that is still around today. The commercial emphasizes that Cockta is made from all-natural ingredients (presumably in contrast to Coca-Cola, which was also bottled and sold in Yugoslavia):



More Yugoslav-era commercials:



And from Communist Hungary, a very sensual commercial -- for a bug spray:

That clip of Rediffusion's news from 1980 is finally back online -- and ironically, given the topic of this thread, the lead story is about a now-defunct country:



(Thanks to Raymie at tvnewstalk.net)

Here are various old jingles and other excerpts from LM Radio, a commercial pop music station broadcasting from Lourenço Marques in Portuguese Mozambique but primarily serving South Africa -- a bit like Radio Luxembourg in Europe. (In 1975, Mozambique became independent and Communist-run, Lourenço Marques was renamed Maputo, and LM Radio went off the air and was replaced in South Africa by SABC Radio 5.)



Here's a site devoted to the history of the station:

http://www.lmradio.org/index.htm

http://www.lmradio.org/Images/LM_tuning_guide.jpg

And from 1991, a report about South Africa's first talk radio station and a black radio station at a time when censorship was being abolished and the country was moving towards multiracial elections:

And here are a few commercials from pre-revolutionary Cuba (along with some other programming):

And here's a Cold War-era promotional video for the American Forces Network (AFN) Europe, based in West Germany:

Not from a defunct regime (unfortunately!), but here's recently released, pre-1994 footage of Kim Jong Il touring North Korean TV facilities:

KCTV in 16:9: