The History of Television in Portugal begins a few decades after the birth of Television, which began its development worldwide in the mid 20’s.
In Portugal, the official date of the implementation of television is the 15th December 1955, the day when Radiotelevisão Portuguesa (RTP) was founded and designated as official public television service, being managed by an administrator appointed by the Government. Portuguese Government had at the time one third of the capital of the society, and the remaining two thirds were distributed by private radio broadcasters and private subscribers. However, the first broadcast was only done near nine months after the official foundation, a short experimental program filmed in Lisbon’s Popular Fair, on the 4th September 1956. A few months later, in March 1957, regular broadcasts begun, and by the end of the same year most of the country had access to the emissions. The first years of television in Portugal have been during a period were the country was being governed by a dictatorial regime, so the contents were very restricted and controlled by censorship.
First with Salazar and later with Marcelo Caetano, RTP was always the main broadcaster of the dictatorial regime, mainly through the regular news blocks. As a tool of propaganda, RTP was then, along with the repressive police system and censorship, one of the fundamental basis of the one-party Government, and it can be considered one of the responsible for the maintenance of the dictatorship.
In 1968 the second Portuguese television channel was founded, namely RTP2, which was also owned by the Government, and just like its “older brother”, it was also subjected to the same censor processes. A few years later, in 1972, RTP Madeira was founded, and in 1975 RTP Açores started its emissions, both of them following the same functioning principles as the previous channels.
After the military Revolution on the 25th April 1974, and the end of the dictatorial regime, Portuguese television was finally free for the tight Government control. RTP was nationalized, and it became a public company called RTP, EP. One year later, in 1975, began the first broadcasts in color, even though they were still rare, and color only became a norm in every Portuguese television in 1980. Besides the traditional contents, like news and entertainment, it was also in the 80’s that imported shows from other countries started being broadcasted.
The fact that, for a long time, there weren’t any other channels in Portugal than the ones owned by the Government didn’t prevent the fast and numerous appearances of many foreign channels, broadcasted by satellite. This movement began on the first half of the 80’s and shortly after there were already dozens of foreign channels, from Europe and America, some generalists, like RAI for example, and others themed, like Sky Movies.
On the 10th of June 1992, the Portuguese television took another step forward, with the creation of RTP Internacional, a Portuguese channel that was broadcasted in foreign countries, specifically thought for the wide emigrant network of Portuguese people spread throughout the world.
Later on the same year, on the 6th of October, the broadcasts of the first Portuguese private channel started, that went by the name SIC (Sociedade Independente de Comunicação), a project led by the former Prime-Minister Francisco Pinto Balsemão, and on the 20th of February 1993 a new channel named TVI (Televisão Independente) was created, whose front man was the former Minister of Education, Roberto Carneiro, and whose majority of shares were owned by the Catholic Portuguese Church.
Another important period for the History of Television in Portugal was the month of March of 1993, when was signed the contract of concession of the public service of television, between RTP and the Government, led at the time by Prime-Minister Cavaco Silva. The agreement stated that RTP was obliged to fulfil all the specifications attributed to the public service of television, that were also mentioned in the Law of Television, from September 1990, namely regarding the payment of compensatory allowances derived from the State Budget, and attributed to RTP for its activity has concessionary of Portuguese public service of television. Amongst many other things, this document indicated some of the main responsibilities of the public service of television: stated the costs of satellite broadcast from Canal 1 and TV2 to the autonomous regions of Azores and Madeira; the costs of exploitation of each regional center; the costs of RTP Internacional; defined the scope of cooperation with PALOP (Portuguese-speaking African Countries); maintenance and conservation of audiovisual records; definition of the expenditures that should be made with political transmission time. Altogether, in 1993, the Government stipulated close to 7.5 million escudos for RTP. It is important to mention that after the extinction of the TV tax in 1991, which was for many years the main source of income for RTP, Portuguese television became dependent of advertisement revenues and Government support.
Both private channels SIC and TVI have taken a strong and clear position regarding the Governmental support given to the public television. Francisco Pinto Balsemão, in charge of SIC, gave a speech at a public conference in Lisbon where he criticized the excessive influence of Government in Portuguese society giving as an example the support given to public service television. On the other hand, TVI has accused the Government of being responsible for the “unfair competition” because of the privileges the public channel had, and threatened to present a complaint to the European Union. Meanwhile, other sectors and organizations recognized that the contract for public service television didn’t respect one of the main responsibilities for any public service channel – the programming schedule didn’t offer viewers an alternative to the offer of private channels, being very similar to the one they both followed. One of the most criticized areas was the production of national fiction. In fact, the competences of public television regarding the support, promotion and production of national fiction, national cinema and other forms of audiovisual production where already contemplated in the Law 21/92, where was mentioned, for example, that a certain share of Government budget should be used to finance quotas of specific programs, and to independent production. Globally, the audiovisual system in Portugal functions based on an ambiguous logic, that is common to all member states, which is based on the maintenance of a public radio and television service that consumes a great share of budget, and that doesn’t produce an income that can be justified. This happens not only in Portugal, but in the majority of European countries, and for strategic reasons that are related to commercial strategy and the need to conquer a bigger audience, public televisions have been introducing a growing diversity of programs, and all channels only fulfil the minimum demand for public service, with short segments that are broadcasted outside the premium time; in the case of Portugal, the only programs that are within the scope of public services is the broadcast of political campaigns during election period and a short amount of time for religious broadcasts. However, there isn’t any reference to incentives to the production of national fiction, and there is also a lack of programs related to national culture, defense of minorities, national language and national productions, only the minimum quota defined in the “Television Without Frontiers” directive. Given that, nowadays the transparency in financing and the respect for all defined competences are decisive in order for countries to have a better offer in terms of public service television.
The competition between television channels has been growing throughout the years, with the fast growth of cable television, and the investment public channels have been putting into it: RTP was the first channel that started broadcasts through cable TV, namely with the creation of RTP Notícias, a channel exclusively dedicated to news broadcasts, immediately followed by SIC and TVI, which besides their own news channels, have also created entertainment channels, such has SIC Mulher, Sic Radical or TVI Ficção. Besides the development of already existing Portuguese channels, in the second decade of the 21st Century, many more Portuguese private channels were created, with exclusive broadcasts on cable TV, such as MTV Portugal, FOX, private channels for Portuguese soccer teams, and even some newspapers started investing in television, with the creation of their own channels, like Correio da Manhã.
Like in the rest of the world, Portuguese television is now facing the big challenge of internet competition, and also to the aforementioned economical and competition issues, which makes it necessary for all channels to became more creative every day, and bet on national and unique concepts that make a difference and captivate audiences.
