Mailbox
In this edition of Mailbox: TV stations broadcasting in Czech, Cosmonaut Remek running as candidate to European parliament, winner of the listeners' competition. Listeners quoted: Hynek Bartuska and Robin Heger.
"Because I have no close relatives left back home, I have not been back in the Czech Republic for five years. A colleague who has come back from a one-year stay in Prague said to me that there are over twenty TV stations that broadcast in Czech now. When I was there, there were only four! We are a very small country, why do we need so many stations? What kinds of people watch them?"
I am not exactly sure how many TV stations broadcast in Czech but I did read in the papers recently that there are almost thirty. When you said that there were only four the last time you were here, you probably meant the two public TV stations of Czech TV and the two commercial stations TV Nova and TV Prima. These continue to be the main four stations in the country. The rest are mostly satellite, cable, or regional broadcasts that are not watched by a large amount of people but cover special programmes that deal with the problems of the locality they are broadcasting for.
What was interesting, however, was that the paper pointed out the Czech and Slovak speaking stations employ some one thousand people and several hundred actors because they need to dub foreign productions into Czech. Every year, hundreds of millions of crowns are spent on dubbing. On average, it costs 70,000 Czech crowns, or some 2,500 US dollars, to dub a feature film for television. The most popular studios that deal with them are in Prague, the Moravian capital of Brno and the north Moravian town of Ostrava.
Robin Heger sent us an e-mail from Ukraine asking:
"Is it true that Mr Remek is re-joining the Czech Communist Party and will become its candidate for the position of EU commissioner?"
And finally on Mailbox, it's time for us to reveal who has won the listeners' competition for the month of January. You were to "name the distinguished Czech composer who lived from 1874 to 1935, whose 130th anniversary of his birth was celebrated in January" and I'm pleased to say that all answers, without exception, were correct. The famous Czech composer in question was Josef Suk. The name we pulled out of our hat this time is:
Mr. Muhammad Shamim from Keralam State, in India.
On behalf of the entire Radio Prague team, I congratulate you and hope you'll continue to take part in our competitions. Our Josef Suk CD is in the mail. In fact, this is where I would like to apologise to Mr Don Schumann, our winner of November, who has had to patiently wait for his prize, as it was sitting in my drawer and I had forgotten to have it sent to him -Mr Schumann, if you're listening, please forgive me.
Moving on to the question for the month of February:
Many of you most probably know that July 3, this year, marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Czech composer Leos Janacek. A question on that would be too easy. What we would like to know is "what Janacek opera will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of its world premiere? - here's a hint, it was premiered at the Czech National Theatre in Brno on January 21st, 1904.
Please send your answers to the Radio Prague English Section, 120 99 Prague 2, the Czech Republic or by e-mail to [email protected]. Your answers should get to us by February 29.
