Radio Television of Kosovo

Radio Television of Pristina (1974-1992)

In 1945, Radio Pristina (Albanian: Radio Prishtina) began broadcasting out of Prizren following the Second World War. The Albanian-language editorial office of Television Belgrade was founded in 1966 and by 1974 it began airing television programming from the station, borrowing its equipment since it had no equipment of its own. On 29 November 1975, the Radio Television of Pristina (RTP) was founded in accordance with the 1974 Constitution of the SFRY as the first and only Albanian-language broadcaster, employing 1,700 people in its own building.[2] On 5 July 1990, the station was threatened to follow orders from a new Serbia-appointed director, foregoing any editorial independence. The majority of the staff refused, and thus the RTP was violently repossessed by the Serbian police. Almost all Kosovo Albanian employees were fired as the station went dark in the middle of a news broadcast.[3] The remaining 50 employees were left operating the station under surveillance of, and allegiance to Serbia[4][5] and later in 1992, the television itself, together with Television Belgrade and Television Novi Sad, became a branch of the Radio Television of Serbia .[6]

Radio Television of Kosovo (1999-present)

The newly liberated Kosovo regained control of RTP on 28 June 1999 after the end of the Kosovo War.[7] After UNMIK took over the administration of Kosovo in June 1999 and re-employed former RTP staffs, RTK began broadcasting on 19 September 1999 via analog satellite in PAL and SECAM television broadcast standards with a daily two-hour transmission, expanding to four hours per day in November 2000, with programming mainly in Albanian and once-a-day news edition in Serbian and Turkish. The following July, it expanded to seven hours a day and began offering programming in Bosnian as well.[8]

In 2001, RTK was established as an independent public service broadcaster by a UNMIK broadcasting regulation. The station was initially managed by the European Broadcasting Union to permit time for a non-political Board of Directors to be established. This was in place and the station was independent of the EBU by the end of the year. In January 2002, an office was opened in Tirana, with a website launching in July. A second office was opened in Tetovo in November 2002.

In 2002, at which time it was broadcasting 15 hours a day, 35% of the station's broadcasts were produced externally, with the bulk of programming local. It included news and business coverage as well as farming information. Broadcasting remained multilingual, with programming in another language (the Romani language magazine “Yekhipe") beginning in September 2003. On 22 December of that year, the station began broadcasting 24 hours a day. Also in 2002, RTK began hosting awards, with the best news moderator being honored by the "Drita Germizaj" award and the best cameraman by the "Rudolf Sopi" award.

RTK's radio transmission began with the October 1999 acquisition of the multilingual public radio station "Radio Prishtina", which became "Radio Kosovo". In 2000, it acquired the multi-ethnic UN youth radio station Radio Blue Sky.

In 2013, RTK introduced a new logo and a newly corporate identity for the first time of 14 years since 1999. By that, the grey-coloured 1-numeral along with the red letter R, the white letter T, and the yellow letter K are all replaced by something brand new that is the RTK wordmark which is coloured blue, but it has the letter K being put inside a half square. At the same time, RTK's TV services were expanded to include a channel called RTK 2, which is intended to focus on minorities, and with it, all minority language programming were moved from RTK 1 to RTK 2.[9]

By 2014, RTK saw the launch of two new stations such as RTK 3 which is a news channel and RTK 4 which is an arts and documentary channel. In 2018, the network switched to high-definition broadcasting for all its channels.

Journalists at RTK have repeatedly protested in 2015 against political interference, up to asking for the dismissal of chief editors for obstruction and internal censorship.[10]

Television

Radio