Country Ukraine Founded 1 February 1939 | Official website Official site Launch date 8 April 2015 | |
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Type Broadcast radio and television,
online and printing Availability National; International Former names State Tele-Radiobroadcasting Company (DTRK) Owner State Committee for Television and Radio-broadcasting | ||
National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine (UA:PBC) (Ukrainian: Національна суспільна телерадіокомпанія України - Natsionalna Suspilna Teleradiokompaniya Ukrayiny) is the national public broadcaster in Ukraine. As such it was registered on 19 January 2017. In its revamped form the company provides content for its three television and radio channels.
From 1995 until its current name the television predecessor of the current broadcaster was named "National Television Company of Ukraine" (NTU; Ukrainian: Національна Телекомпанія України - Natsionalna Telekompaniya Ukrayiny). Radio Ukraine was its radio predecessor and a stand alone company until it merged with NTU to be the first public broadcasting company of Ukraine.
Radio broadcasts in Ukraine, at the time part of the USSR, began in Kharkiv in 1924, and a nationwide radio network was initiated in 1928. (In the first years of the USSR Kharkiv was the capital of Ukraine, from December 1919 to January 1934, after which the capital relocated to Kiev.) In 1965 the first nation-wide Ukrainian television channel Ukraiinske Telebachenniaor UT (‘Ukrainian Television’) was established. (Ukraine was part of the USSR from 1920 until it declared its independence on 24 August 1991.)
Overview
It is a public join-stock agency with 100% of its shares belonging to the state, and operates the television channel Pershyi Natsionalnyi, the only Ukrainian TV channel that has a coverage over 97% of Ukraine's territory and is the only state-owned national channel. Its programs are oriented at all social layers of the Ukrainian society and national minorities.
Among priority directions of the network are informative publicism, popular scientific, culturologic, entertaining and sport-oriented ones. According to the viewer's rating the First Channel significantly trails all of his more recent privately held rivals. It was planned that the National Television Company of Ukraine (NTCU) will be changed to Public Television Network in 2009. The government will lose its direct control over the national network. The Public Television Network will contain of several channels, such as, "First Channel", "Second Channel", "Euronews Ukraine" and "Ukraine and the World". But not until 2014 a new law was passed to make the network an independent, public broadcaster. With the creation of this National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine in 2015 the National Radio Company of Ukraine merged into this new company. It, (renamed) the National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine, was registered on 19 January 2017.