This lively and ground-breaking collection brings together work on forms of popular television within the authoritarian regimes of Europe after World War Two. Ten chapters based on new and original research examine approaches to programming and individual programmes in Spain, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Romania, the USSR and the GDR at a time when they were governed as dictatorships or one-party states. Drawing on surviving archives, scripts and production records, contemporary publications, YouTube clips and interviews with producers and performers, its chapters recover examples of television programming history unknown beyond national borders and often preserved largely in the memories of the audiences who lived with them. The introduction examines how television can be considered popular in circumstances where audience appeal is often secondary to the need for state control. Published in English, Popular television in authoritarian Europe represents a significant intervention in transnational television studies, making these histories available to scholars for the first time, encouraging comparative enquiry and extending the reach intellectually and geographically of European television history.There is a foreword by John Corner and an informative timeline of events in the history of television in the countries covered.

Peter Goddard is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Media, University of Liverpool

Foreword John Corner1. Introduction: Popular television in authoritarian Europe: A popular conundrum? Peter Goddard2. Football and bullfighting on television: spectacle and Spanish identity during Francos dictatorship (195675) Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano3. From puppets to puppeteers: modernising Spain through entertainment television Mar Binimelis, Josetxo Cerdán and Miguel Fernández Labayen4. Entertaining the Colonels: propaganda, social change and entertainment in Greek television fiction (196774) Gregory Paschalidis5. Staying outside The Egg: surrealist entertainment during the Greek dictatorship Christina Adamou6. Between politics and soap: the articulation of ideology and melodrama in Czechoslovak communist television serials (197589) Irena Carpentier Reifová, Petr Bednarík and ¦imon Dominik7. Re-staging the popular: televising Nicolae Ceausescu Dana Mustata8. KVN: live television and improvised comedy in the Soviet Union, 195771 Andrew Janco9. Undercover: how the East German political system presented itself in television series Sascha Trültzsch and Reinhold Viehoff10. Agitprop gone wrong: Der Schwarze Kanal Frank Engelmann-del Mestre11. Popular music on East German television: Constructing the televisual pop community in the GDR Edward Larkey12. A timeline of events in the history of television in authoritarian Europe Berber Hagedoorn and Peter GoddardIndex