Radio Televizioni Shqiptar
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Radio Televizioni Shqiptar (RTSH) is the state broadcaster in Albania, founded in 1938 and operated from Tirana.
RTSH runs a national television station (TVSH) and two national radio stations (using the name Radio Tirana). An international service broadcasts radio programmes in Albanian and seven other languages via Mediumwave (AM) and Shortwave (SW).
Since 1993, RTSH has also run an international television service via satellite, aimed at Albanian-language communities in Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and northern Greece, plus the diaspora in the rest of Europe.
RTSH is funded by a combination of commercial advertising, a licence fee of US$0.50 [1] a year and grant-in-aid from the Albanian government.
[edit] Communist rule
Despite the country's tiny size, Radio Tirana was a fairly major international broadcaster during the "Cold War". During Albania's alliance with China in the 1960s and 1970s, Radio Tirana had to walk a fine line between being anti-West whilst also being anti-Soviet. As such, Radio Tirana kept close to the official policy of the People's Republic of China, which was also both anti-West and anti-Soviet whilst still being communist in tone. Following the break with China, programming still remained Marxist-Leninist in nature.
During the 1980s and early 1990s the international service was broadcast on 1395kHz and was received with very strong signals in the UK during the evening and through the night.
Political programming predominated during this period. Features included Marxism-Leninism - an ever young and scientific doctrine and Socialism and the youth. The feature Leafing through the Marxist-Leninist press restricted itself to the journals of foreign communist parties allied to the Party of Labour of Albania.
However, during the last months of the socialist era, overtly political programming was drastically scaled down, and the long-established practice of playing The Internationale at the end of each broadcast was abandoned.
