Pannonian BBC
Viewers nationwide witnessed the outrageous debut of the Hungarian state television on March 15, evidently the 2nd chapter of the media war, that has been going on since the beginning of February.
As stated before, Mr. Lajos Simicska, an oligarch once close to Orbán, officially broke up with his former college rommate, allegedly, due to various interest clashes in the distribution of state procurements, but most importantly the construction of a nuclear power plant. The most visible symptom of the war is the “retuning” of certain channels and newspapers, such as Hír TV and Magyar Nemzet. Mr. László Köver, Speaker of the National Assembly even stated in an interview: “from now on, they are to be considered as opposition news channels”. As a result, rumors have emerged of a party directive within Fidesz to initiate a complete boycott against these channels.
The next, logical step of this information war was the launch of alternative news sources, that provide complete, unquestionable propaganda for the government. Perhaps it is better to put it this way: Orbán - being afraid of losing contact with their conservative supporters - completely devoured the state television and transformed it into a 24-0 news channel, based on the BBC model.
Weather forecast on March 15. Yes, two experts are explaining the weather.
Source: index.hu
Index.hu provided an excellent insight article about the current state of this television that can easily be summed up in a couple of statements:
the program is made by unexperienced, cherry-picked, loyal people (and an army of free interns)
when they realized, that they sent away too many professionals, they re-hired a couple in a part-time position
the goal to kill “Hír Tv” overwrote the basic requirements of being a state television
they simply lied in their first evaluation of the public viewer rate figures
modern, therefore extremely expensive tools were procured for the program production, neglecting the legal requirements of public procurement
since the staff could not process and provide materials for the 24-0 broadcast in time, weather forecast became a key program element on the first day (March 15)
as the chaos continued on March 16 as well, the channel simply decided to broadcast the plenary meeting of the parliament
March 17: see March 16
Here is a cam-recorded mix of bloopers from the first day, enjoy! You don’t need to speak Hungarian to recognize shame. The best part? It costed almost 4 million EUR so far.
March 18, 2015











