 | |
| Type | Media |
|---|---|
| Country | Spain |
| Headquarters | Bilbao,Biscay |
Broadcast area | Basque Autonomous Community Navarre French Basque Country |
| Owner | Department of Culture of theBasque Government |
Launch date | 20 May 1982; 42 years ago (1982-05-20) |
| Affiliation(s) | FORTA |
Official website | eitb.eus |
Euskal Irrati Telebista (Basque:[eus̺kalirat̪it̪elebis̺t̪a];transl. Basque Radio Television; acronymEITB, brandedeitb) is theBasque Autonomous Community's publicbroadcast service, which broadcasts throughout theBasque Country. Its main brand isEuskal Telebista (ETB, Basque Television).
EITB is the leadingmedia group in the Basque Autonomous Community of Spain with five domestictelevision channels and sixradio stations. Their channels are also broadcast in the wholeBasque Country, and people in nearby territories such asBurgos (inCastile and León),Cantabria,Huesca andSaragossa (inAragon),La Rioja, and the non-Basque-speaking region ofPyrénées-Atlantiques (inFrance) can also get the signal. It has been running since 1982 and during this period it has established itself as a majormediaorganisation, connecting with more than amillion people every day. The majority of EITB's broadcasts deal with localnews andentertainment.
InFrancoist Spain, the Basque underground had an independent voice, Radio Euskadi, which operated onshortwave from two continents.[1]
On 20 May 1982, theBasque Parliament unanimously approved the law that set up Euskal Irrati Telebista and on 23 November, the radio channelEuskadi Irratia started broadcasting.ETB, for its part, reached Basque households at midnight on 31 December 1982 with a presentation by the BasqueLehendakariCarlos Garaikoetxea and its programmes were regularized, starting from 16 February in the following year. At the time about 30 people worked in the ETB centre inIurreta to provide programmes exclusively inBasque.
Several years later,ETB 2, its second flagship television channel, commenced operations on 31 May 1986 broadcasting inSpanish, and at the present time it has a further two international channels. Following an agreement between Sogecable and EITB, 87 million households all overEurope were able to pick upETB Sat from theAstra satellite since May 2001. The corporation also launchedCanal Vasco, a medium specifically geared towards theAmericas, where it reached viewers through AmericanDTH andcable companies. Both of these were merged intoETB Basque in early 2021.
Following the implementation ofDigital terrestrial television, the Basque government allowed EITB to create two new digital television channels.[2] The first,ETB 3, started broadcasting in October 2008,[3] offering programming for children and youth inBasque. The second,ETB 4, was first expected to be a bilingualnews channel, but was later redefined as asports channel.[4][5] Its launch was postponed but ETB 4 subsequently launched officially on 29 October 2014.
The EITB group also has fiveradio stations with more than 300,000 listeners every day -Euskadi Irratia,Radio Euskadi,Radio Vitoria,Euskadi Gaztea andEITB Musika, respectively.
Among many notable staff,Urtzi Urrutikoetxea has worked at EITB and is a prominent writer in his current community of Washington, DC where he substitutes at a DC public school.
On 19 February 1985,Iberia Flight 610, aBoeing727 from Madrid to Bilbao, crashed onto an EITB antenna during approach toBilbao Airport, causing the deaths of all 148 occupants inside the jet.[6]
The Basque community has increased its 2015 budget to 124.6 million euro up from 107.6 million the year before.[7]
Both EITB and ETB have been at the center of some controversy over their content and audiovisual productions.
In 2017, theETB 1 channel broadcast a program calledEuskalduna naiz, eta zu? and one of the episodes broadcast was the source of much controversy due to some statements that were made in it.[8][9] The controversy was denounced by theUnión del Pueblo Navarro (UPN), thePopular Party (PP) andCovite, who announced that they would carry the matter went to the courts and the European Commission and thePSE-EE asked the public entity to be held accountable.[10] The matter even reached the Spanish Senate. Finally EITB had to apologize for it.[11]
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In 2022 a small controversy arose withBetizu (2001–2011). TheBetizu stars (presenters, actors, singers, etc.) were children and adolescents (child stars). As adults, some of the stars spoke about the treatment they received on the program when they recorded it.
The singer and presenterZuriñe Hidalgo was one of the many stars, where she has been since she was 11 years old. In the year 2022, as an adult, she recognized that it was not easy being so young on the programme and criticized the show and theETB 1 channel for certain facts, declaring that "she suffered discrimination in situations ranging from the way she was dressed, to the way they treated her".[12]
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