History of television in St Olaf
The history of television in St Olaf started in 1928 when the King of St Olaf, Haakon I, ordered for a television station to be started in Gafloofen under the name KTB using the Baird 30-line system.
KTB (1928-1960)
KTB (Kingenstaadloesbillede) started broadcasting on April 2nd, 1928. KTB was used to accompany radio broadcasts with additional text information. 99.9% of St Olaf had reception by December 5th, 1930. By 1932 Haakon ordered the television set to be an absolute necessity in every household, primarily in aid of people with a hearing impairment. Haakon used the invention to keep in touch with his people and started regular speech broadcasts. He kept appearing regularly until his death in 1957.
On February 7th, 1935, despite of its popularity as an information service, KTB started with regular light entertainment broadcasting. KTB would broadcast live performance from the radio studio in the jazz genre and broadcast an early form of a live soap opera called “De dejliye dem” from September 14th, 1938 until the transitioning into a republic in 1960. The 30-line system would prevail until this transitioning because Haakon called the Marconi 405-line system ‘vulgar’ and stated he had meant for the service to be informational with any form of entertainment to be subpar to television’s incentive in St Olaf. As there was no private enterprise in St Olaf KTB remained the sole television service until 1960 and Haakon’s successor Olav did little to adjust to modern standards.
SOUT, private enterprise (1960-2014)
With the transitioning of monarchy to republic in 1960 came an end to the KTB 30-line era. Between 1960 and 1963 transmitters were updated to be able to receive the new public service SOUT. SOUT started broadcasting on September 7th, 1960 in its own system called ETV (Epubliq Television) featuring 422 lines and broadcasting in sepia tone. Carl Bjoerklund, the first president of the republic, stated sepia added artistic effect and ‘was decided upon to subliminally influence the creative young minds’. SOUT had little issues appealing to the masses, despite competition from the new private enterprise channels VU (Vjensyn Udsende) and USvT (Uliye Sanye va Tyskland).
SOUT broadcast general interest programming, popular light entertainment and kept to an ideal of informing the public. In order to remain neutral towards all broadcasters the president would speak towards the public on a rotation scale between broadcasters. This tradition was broken by the Kistendemokatene on January 15th, 1980 quoting ‘political correctness is the shambles of current society’ and ‘VU and USvT are the epitome of decentralisation’. USvT would broadcast both West German import curling matches and East German light entertainment. VU would win television ratings at graveyard shift hours for their subjectively superb news reporting coming live from a basement in Xico, Mexico.
SOUT switched to a 350-line colour system on March 21st, 1966. Transmitters however would not be fully updated throughout the country to receive colour television until February 2nd, 1969. The immediate cancellation of the 422-line monochrome system caused for complaints from viewers in the South of St Olaf because the quality of the broadcasts had been compensated in order for colour broadcasting to happen. Considering they were last to receive colour television they were watching a compromised version of the colour broadcast in monochrome until 1969.
During the private enterprise surgence era from 1960 to 1975 regional programming thrived particularly in areas with low sufficiency in the Olaf Minnesotan language. OBC (Olaf Broadcasting Corporation) started broadcasting on April 19th, 1961 and remains the biggest source of English language programming in the country till date. In 1966 it created the musical phenomenon Cavalcade which would outperform SOUT’s Monday viewing figures in 1969 despite limited availability.