The International Radio and Television Organisation (official name in French: Organisation Internationale de Radiodiffusion et de Télévision or OIRT (before 1960 International Broadcasting Organization (IBO), official name in French: Organisation Internationale de Radiodiffusion (OIR)) was an East European network of radio and television broadcasters with the primary purpose of establishing ties and securing an interchange of information between those various organizations responsible for broadcasting services, promoting the interests of broadcasting, seeking by international cooperation a solution to any matter relating to broadcasting, and studying and working out all measures having as their aim the development of broadcasting.
General description OIRT was presented as a voluntary non-profit association of television and radio broadcasting organizations, with the aim of exchanging programs, as well as information related to program production and technical development. Achieving this goal was considered the key to spreading truthful information and cultural values throughout the world community. Unlike the European Broadcasting Union (European Broadcasting Area), the OIRT did not have its own broadcasting area or other regional borders, within which the membership of broadcasting organizations was possible.
OIRT was funded by membership fees paid by all members of the organization, income from publishing and other sources. The Organization collaborated with international and regional (in particular, with the EBU) broadcasting organizations, the United Nations and UNESCO, as well as with various telecommunications organizations. In particular, OIRT had the status of a category C organization in UNESCO, was included in the register of ECOSOC organizations, had consultative status with the International Telecommunication Union, and collaborated with the International Council on Film and Television. OIRT was a member of the International Conference of Broadcasting Unions, and in 1986 hosted the Fifth World Conference of Broadcasting Unions in Prague, which brought together 175 representatives from 9 broadcasting organizations.
The statutory objectives of the OIRT (Article II of the Charter) were:
establishing links between various organizations providing radio and television broadcasting and those in compliance with the provisions of the OIRT Charter; to ensure, as far as possible, a complete mutual exchange of information between OIRT members on the technical progress of sound and television broadcasting, on various schemes aimed at improving broadcasting methods, and, in general, on all measures taken in the field of broadcasting; comprehensive protection of the interests of radio and television in all areas; finding solutions to broadcasting problems through international cooperation; the study and development of all measures generally aimed at the development of radio and television, especially the development of broadcasting technology; study and develop measures that are important for the rapid development of radio and television broadcasting methods in insufficiently electrified regions and regions with specific climatic conditions.
The potential TV audience of OIRT reached 350 million viewers. The official languages of the OIRT since 1946 have been English, Russian and French. Chinese was briefly granted official status in 1952 when it was accepted into the OIRT of China. Since 1959, German has been given the status of the official language of OIRT conferences and publications. Throughout its existence, the organization retained the French-language abbreviation OIRT as its name, while the English-language IBO was used only occasionally.
OIRT produced periodicals: the monthly newsletter OIRT Information, as well as the Radio and Television magazine, which was published six times a year and had a small editorial office in Prague. The journal's publications (in English, French, Russian, and GermanAndrew G. Sennitt. World Radio TV Handbook (WRTH) 1992 Edition Volume 46. — New York: Billboard A.G., 1992.) reported on the activities of the OIRT and its members, as well as on the work of all bodies and their sub-commissions. Catalogs of Transmissions suitable for Exchange were released four times a year, which were sent to both OIRT participants and Eurovision members (since 1956, catalogs of radio programs, since 1960, catalogs of TV shows).
History The activities of the International Broadcasting Union (IBU‑UIR) ceased with the outbreak of World War II: its observation and technical center in Brussels fell under Nazi control and served the Wehrmacht, including as a listening station for Allied radio communications. After the war, the IBU was considered discredited due to its collaboration with the Nazi regime and did not enjoy the trust of European countries, especially the USSR, which insisted on its dissolution. In March 1946, at the Brussels international meeting of broadcasters, the USSR proposed the creation of a new organization with Soviet influence and authority for global wave redistribution. The new organization proposed to introduce a voting model in which the volume of votes is proportional to the area of the country and the number of radio transmitters on its territory.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom, which suspended relations with the IBU in 1941, was considering ways to revive the IBU in a new format, vacillating between temporary membership in it and an emphasis on the priority of redistributing waves between major countries before creating some kind of new broadcasting association. On 14 June 1946, the BBC notified the committee for the re-establishment of the union of its refusal to join the IBU. Two weeks later, the UK actually found itself on the sidelines of international cooperation.
Without British participation, 26 members founded the OIR on 28 June 1946. The next day, at the General Assembly of the International Broadcasting Union (IBU), an attempt was made to dissolve this body, but the motion failed to obtain the required majority. However, 18 of the 28 existing members left the IBU and become co-founders of the new OIR.
In 1946, the newly created OIR installed itself in the IBU building in Brussels. Technical activity was taken up again under the authority of two directors, one delegated by the Soviet Union and the other by France. However, the political situation gradually degraded into the Cold War and this created an uneasy situation of distrust within the staff of the Technical Centre.
The BBC, determined to create a new broadcasting organization under the auspices of the United Nations, expected that the 1946 United Nations Conference on broadcasting would bring order to the dilemma, but the conference did not take place that year, and the United Nations broadcasting conferences in Atlantic City and Copenhagen that followed in 1947 and 1948 could not come up with fundamental solutions. The BBC's proposal to join the OIR in exchange for a change in the voting procedure (distribution of votes in accordance with membership in the International Telecommunication Union - thus, only one broadcaster from each ITU member state would have the right to vote), proposed by the British earlier, did not pass. The business climate in negotiations between broadcasters has steadily deteriorated as tensions between Western and socialist states have grown and the Berlin crisis has developed.
Since 1948, the BBC began preparing to establish a new broadcasting organization. On 19 May 1948, the OIR issued a statement from Brussels declaring itself "the sole representative European body in the field of broadcasting." Throughout 1949, a series of consultations were held to resolve the current crisis, with the central meeting being the August meeting of the IBU Council and the heads of the OIR and the BBC in Stresa, Italy. The Italian broadcaster RAI, a member of both conflicting organizations, hoped to mediate the disputed issues. However, after several meetings, the old differences could not be resolved, and the meeting was deemed a failure.
At the same time, in Stresa, at the initiative of the BBC, a Western European consensus began to emerge: if the OIR did not agree to change its charter to suit British broadcasting, United Kingdom would begin creating a new union with a core of Marshall Plan countries. The Belgian, French, Italian, and Dutch delegations immediately made it clear that they were prepared to leave the OIR, provided a new union was created and after consultations with national authorities. Three months later, at the OIR General Assembly in Brussels in November 1949, broadcasters from Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands announced their withdrawal from the OIR. They were joined by broadcasters from Luxembourg, Monaco, Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon and Egypt.
In 1950, some members (mostly western European) left the organization to form the new European Broadcasting Union (EBU), among them Belgium, Egypt, France, Italy, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Monaco, Morocco, Netherlands, Tunisia and Yugoslavia.
Broadcasting organizations from the following countries remained members: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Finland (also a member of EBU), Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union (including individual members from the Byelorussian SSR, Karelo-Finnish SSR, Latvian SSR, Lithuanian SSR, Moldavian SSR, Ukrainian SSR and Estonian SSR).
As a consequence, the OIR headquarters and its Technical Centre was relocated from Brussels to Prague in 1950. Staff members from Belgium and other Western countries, some of whom had already been active before the war, stayed on in Brussels and the centre became the technical centre of the new EBU.
Unlike the EBU, the OIRT was not limited to European and Mediterranean countries and operated as a global organization. Members of the organization included countries aligned with the Eastern bloc, such as Cuba, Vietnam, the People's Republic of China and North Korea (although the latter's membership was temporarily inactive after their break with the USSR), as well as the allies of the USSR that were temporarily led by communist parties, such as Nicaragua and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, and the African and Middle Eastern states having been temporarily associated or supported by the socialist camp.
Since 1957, OIRT has established cooperation with the European Broadcasting Union at the level of technical committees, and since 1965, cooperation has begun between the programming committees of these organizations. In July 1959, the OIR changed its name to the Organisation Internationale de Radiodiffusion et de Télévision (OIRT).
Since the mid-1960s, the OIRT has been supporting and assisting broadcasters from African and Asian countries, including providing methodological assistance, material for radio and television broadcasts, and sometimes consulting services (GDR Television participated in the creation of Vietnam Television and also assisted in the restoration of Cambodian television after the Pol Pot regime). Since 1978, Czechoslovak Television has been holding training seminars for broadcasters on editing and program production. Since the early 1970s, GDR Television has been training personnel for television and radio broadcasting in developing countries and regularly attracting fellows to the country for training. In the late 1980s, the OIRT itself planned to establish a Coordination Bureau for Cooperation with Developing Countries.
Since 1968, in order to coordinate the coverage of the Olympic Games, the EBU/OIRT Task Force was formed for the first time, consisting of 160 people representing European broadcasters from both unions and representatives of the Mexican Olympic broadcaster, which ensured the transmission of 136 hours of sporting events to the European continent.