On December 15, 1955, the Portuguese government decided to form the first national TV channel. Portuguese television first broadcast as made by RTP (Radiotelevisão Portuguesa) but the curtain was only raised on September 4, 1956. The transmissions were barely picked up by the metropolitan Lisbon area but, three months later, it could also be seen in Porto. After that, it would be transmitting the arrival of NASA astronauts on the moon. The second national channel known as RTP2 was “born” on December 25, 1968. Most recently, it was replaced by “Dois” on January 5, 2004 with the support of RTP and the civil society. The objective is to defend culture and the Portuguese language.
SIC (Sociedade Independente de Comunicação), the first private channel, started to transmit on October 6, 1992. Property of Francisco Pinto Balsemão, the TV channels content was mainly based on show business but soon, he understood the indispensability of information programs. It was the beginning of the rating war.
The next private channel, by the name of TVI (Televisão Independente), made the initial transmissions on February 20, 1993. Owned by the Catholic Church, it was really hard to maintain the TV station at the time. In 2000, José Eduardo Moniz became responsible of turning this situation around and quickly secured the ratings for TVI.