Berne 1990

Tony Fahy,

Tamás Szecskö

Adam Levendel

Graham Mytton

Peter Menneer

(Miloš Řehák – 1967-8, Josef Čamský 1969), dossier, testimonial

Some forty years ago as a young system analyst I started my career in Czech Radio. It was during the turbulent times following the Soviet invasion of 1968.  At that time, new positions were created while many working places and even whole institutes had been abolished. 

The Czech Radio planned to buy a large computer and our department’s task was to prepare an agenda for it. When Radio Prague International started to work on enquette of its foreign audience my boss remembered my sociological background and sent me to help them. That was the occasion of my first contact with Graham Mytton who very kindly forwarded to me several questionnaires that had been filled in by listeners who accidentally sent them to the B.B.C. instead of to Radio Prague.

I would like to point out the specific conditions of our work under the Communist rule. Anybody who wanted to publish anything (even a student diploma thesis or a non-ideological text of methodological nature), had to first “launch a fog”, i.e., to start the article by several quotations of Soviet authors. This was a rule across most of the Eastern and Central European region most of the time. (Hungary and Poland during the period of thawing in late 1980s and the Gorbachev era began to be exceptions: I remember some Western participants of the IAMCAR conference in Prague 1984 asked me about the “fogging practice” politely with barely hidden disapproval.)

Generally, people who were not ideologically acceptable to the Communist leaders, or people who emigrated to the West, were not supposed to be quoted or even mentioned. Still, one could smuggle them into the text if you flew under the censors’ radar. So you could publish about a music theoretician and sound questionnaire pioneer Prof. Karbusický, who had been working for private radio stations in Western Germany in those times.  Or you could even publish something about Czech audience research pioneer Josef Ehrlich, despite the fact that he was politically persecuted and probably ended up in a communist jail as a prisoner of conscience in the 1950’s. Fortunately, there were no web or computer supports to aid censors’ work and they missed everything that was above their level of knowledge.

For instance, Jiří Lederer, one of the most prominent reformer journalists, had been the head of the Czech Radio Audience Research during the optimistic era of 1962-1967 until he went over to a newly founded magazine Reporter. He had a close relationship with Polish journalists and Polish audience research specialists, also thanks to his Polish wife. In 1972-1973 and again in 1977-1980 he was incarcerated because of his writings against the Soviet occupation and the spreading of so called “ideological diversion,” i.e., divergent and therefore unauthorized books and magazines. After his release Lederer emigrated and shortly lived in Birnbach in Western Germany, where he soon passed away in 1983. Most of this I learned much later, after the democratic change of 1989.

In 1976 I became a manager of the Audience research department. I shall explain later on how it happened. In my new position I started to actively inquire who was who in the audience research departments in Eastern Germany, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union and how they did their research. Obviously, under Soviets, science was under the dictate of ideology. Naturally pure data collection & commentary including audience research less so. For many decent persons, audience research was a good option, though it also brought along a Hamlet like question, which had been accompanied by ever-repeating abolition from above.

The same rule was apparent on the international scale: for instance, there was a great difference between practically no audience research in Bulgarian Radio on the one hand and sophisticated empirical approach of our Eastern German colleagues on the other. The Russians practiced good professional work but almost in a clandestine manner. I found their research unit after extensive asking: in a battered old ex-tzarist palace far from the Radio and TV headquarters. Hungary and Poland did not have a good reputation in the ideological sense and thus the Czech Radio management would not let me go to learn there. As a matter of fact, I studied sociology that was reintroduced to universities in 1966, and in the absence of Czech materials  obtained what was needed from books by Zygmund Bauman, Jan Sczepanski and other Polish experts. Poland was the only country under the Soviet rule, which never interrupted the practice of this “bourgeois quasi-science” as it was labelled by Lenin.

I also tried to go to the roots and discovered, that the founding father of the regular Audience Research Service in the Czech Republic, ing. Josef Ehrlich was originally inspired by British experience. During World War II ing.  Ehrlich was in London. He listened to a speech about BBC audience research delivered by Mr. Silvey in a London air-raid shelter during 2^nd WW Luftwaffe raids. He was so enthusiastic about the method that the first thing he did after returning home in May 1945 was to set up a small group of researchers at the Ministry of Information and  started daily interviewing of radio listeners about yesterday’s programs. I was lucky to find the summary of the daily findings from 1945-1952 in the Czech Radio archives in small Czech town Přerov nad Labem. As far as I know, Mr. Ehrlich’s effort to map Czech radio audiences was terminated in 1952 and he himself was persecuted and probably arrested, setting a precedent.  The persecution based on dossiers and testimonials about your loyalty which implied collective liability (in traditional Russian village context “krugovaja poruka” of the pre-20^th century period), i.e., it included a ban on travelling abroad for the whole family and even some remote relatives sometimes, barring access to the university education even for your children, setting limitations for your professional career and your family members etc.

Still, I managed to write an article for a special Journalist magazine “Sešity novináře” where I compared the 1950s and 1980s periods. There I mentioned listeners’ abnegation of a Sunday ideological programme which had been prepared and presented by a prominent representative of the ruling class, Prof. Zdeněk Nejedlý. The censors allowed my article to be published, having first corrected the critical sentence about Nejedlý (although deceased at that time, Nejedlý had been still used by the local propagandists as an appealing role model).

The response to my article was lively. Among others, I was contacted by the widow of Mr. Ehrlich, which was very nice.  However, I fear that as a consequence of this publication, the book with the audience research findings by Mr. Ehrlich was probably destroyed or hidden, perhaps becoming a collateral damage caused by my article. Those who researched the subject later did not seem to have the direct access to the 1950s audience research data any more. Radio was a mainstream medium in those days and via audience data you could study the population’s cultural preferences, their attitudes towards various current affairs, events, personalities etc. Unfortunately the audience data of the 1940's and 1950's are lost."

In 1967 or 1968, therefore after the Jiří Lederer period, Czech Radio Audience research was taken over by Mrs. Jarmila Votavová.  Although a high Communist party cadre, she was attracted to modern research methods. She managed to recruit leading statistical specialists to train her staff (such as Souček and Linhart), she supported special linguistic, musicological and journalistic studies (by Bozděch, Branžovský, Karbusický, Kasan), she invited Lederer to help, she hired a psychologist (Smitka, Štěpánek), she launched or supported a magazine Radio Broadcasting in the World (editor A. Meissnerová) and professional audience researchers (Karpatská, Ort, Cejp).  Under the fresh Russian occupation J. Votavová apparently was not able to organize the 2^nd GEAR meeting, which should had taken place in Prague in August 1968. She probably was not at all in charge of the event. Once Tony Fahy, thus GEAR chairman,  asked me about Miloš Řehák and Josef Čamský, since they were GEAR members in 1967-1969. I suppose they represented Czech Television which probably had to take over the organization of  the GEAR meeting in Prague 1968. The Czech media (Radio and TV) played a key role in the resistance against the Soviet occupation. Logically, during the reinstating of the Soviet regime most employees were purged. Supposedly as many as 80% of the TV workforce was fired or left themselves during the purge which started in 1969. With high probability, both Mr. Řehák and Čamský, the first Czechoslovak ex-GEAR members, were also expelled from the TV, and they disappeared into some other professional fields or emigrated as did other 150 TV employees.

Mrs. Jarmila Votavová herself maintained to keep her position as the Audience Research manager only a little longer. In 1970 she, too was expelled by her Communist ex-comrades to some manual work in a factory somewhere. The Study Section, “Studijní oddělení” in Czech,  as the Czech Radio audience research unit was called, existed only until 1971, when all its former personnel definitely left with one exception—editor of the Radio Broadcasting in World magazine. At that time, the Czech Radio Research Section was founded and Mr. Hruška, who was appointed its manager, began to recruit completely new staff from scratch.

A long time has passed and I forgot many details of my stay in the Czech Radio, but I still remember the key moment that made me to move to the Home Broadcasting Research Section and to adopt the position of its head.  Until then it was managed by Mr. Hruška, who became famous by such episodes as depicted by the following phone call to the Czech Radio (my approximate quotation): “There is a man lying on the ground at the terminus of tram number 6, he is completely drunk. He claims to be your boss. So if it is true, please come and take him away.”

The General Director of Czechoslovak Radio, PhDr. Ján Riško, a close friend of Foreign Secretary Václav Chňoupek,  kept work briefings and meetings which were called by a Latin expression Collegium  to highlight the importance of such almost ministerial gatherings.  One day in 1976, an item on the agenda happened to be ‘the current state of the audience research in Czech Radio’. When there was Mr. Hruška’s turn to deliver his summary, he stood up, stammered with heavy articulation “Dear comrades”, and as he waved his hand with aim to develop his point, he fell to the ground. This boozy gravitation brought me the position of manager of the 3^rd line,  as it used to be called by organizers of the compulsive indoctrination courses, May Day parades etc. who never forgot to send me special reminder.

In 1984 at the time of the conference of the IAMCR (International Association for Mass Communications Research held that year in Prague) Graham Mytton, head of the audience research section of the BBC external services visited the Czech Radio. We met at the conference. He then came to see me and mentioned GEAR and an upcoming Budapest meeting in 1987. I was keen to attend but at the same time skeptical about a real possibility to get a permission to go. However, the political climate started to change: the new managing director,  K. Kvapil  (1985-89) was young and was not so cautious like the former director Karel Hrabal, who already retired. So I travelled to Budapest in 1987 and was very proud to speak some English and listen to English of others.  I recall how Peter Menneer had fun with this and could not believe that English is as rarely used in Czechoslovakia as I claimed.

Still my formal GEAR membership had to be recalled since there was no equivalent Eastern organization under Soviet auspices. So, somebody kind, I think Tony Fahy, sent a denying letter in the name of GEAR to the Czech Radio Headquarters saying that my name appeared at the list of the members by some typing error and thus saved me from possible persecution.

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My travel and stay at a later GEAR meeting in Brussels in 1989 was paid for by the BBC, since otherwise, director Kvapil would not allow me to go.  Again, I must thank for the generosity of my GEAR colleagues. I took a train from the Brussels airport to the centre of the city. And I recall one linguistic incident. The tickets were being paid directly on the train. When conductor came up to me I asked for a ticket worth of 95 Francs: ‘quatre vingt quinze’ in my polished French.  The whole compartment full of Belgian travelers stopped whatever they were doing. They were expecting the conductor’s reaction as if they were watching some TV sitcom. His response was immediate as if learned by practice: we are in Belgium. There is no such number four times twenty and fifteen. What we say is 95 (nonante cinq) . The whole compartment was apparently satisfied with his replacement and everybody was amused.

I safely arrived at the centre of Brussels, but without luggage that was sent off to Canada by some airport mistake. I could not change into a formal suit for the reception in the Town Hall organized for us by the mayor of Brussels. Not knowing how serious my possible infraction of the dressing code may be and what the Western European manners were, I apologised at least to my GEAR colleagues. In a couple of days, my luggage returned from its Canadian trip and Peter Menneer checked with me on that. After my positive answer he inspected my jeans and beige pullover and stated in his usual manner: I see, apparently these are your formal clothes you put on now! 

In 1990 I visited my third GEAR meeting in Bern. This time under quite different political situation in Czechoslovakia, including a changed climate in the Czech Radio. Just several months earlier I returned from my short stay in Vienna Radio-Television, having met Peter Diem. I travelled back by train from the Franz Josef Bahnhof station, named after the late Austrian and also Czech emperor. I sat in a completely empty compartment, except for one East German lady, whom I have seen earlier at the platform as she was kissing with great passion some young man, apparently Austrian.  She could not have guessed that within less than a year the Iron Curtain would go down and she would be able to meet him freely. As the train moved, she moaned from time to time and we communicated a bit, me in my approximate German. I wondered how many people were sitting in the train and she also guessed only a few.  We arrived at the Czech border and the train stopped. All of a sudden, 4 submachine gunners stormed into our compartment and ordered us to step out to the corridor.  They inspected all our pieces of luggage, all seats, racks and corners of the compartment. Then they noisily left without any loot. I anticipated that border would mean troubles, that is why I had rather tossed the “Western” foreign newspapers to the trash bin at the Franz Josef Bahnhof. Such innocent objects as newspapers could be easily taken as ideological diversion by some keen policeman and therefore qualified as an offense. 

The young German lady looked at me a bit accusingly since the humpty-dumpty soldiers were Czechs as I was. Finally, a man without uniform—in a casual suit came in and without looking into our passports he directly addressed me: “So you came back, Mr. Doctor”. He stressed this Mister instead of customary ‘comrade’ of those times to show me his watchfulness and to terrify me a bit.  And also to express his pity, that I did not stay in a capitalist country and apparently planned to continue to augment police labour.

Within several months the Communist regime collapsed and all this absurd show was over, all these evil characters gone. Sometimes I wonder what name would be the most fitting for my character of that period.  For sure we started to act in a brand new play after November 1989: this time written by much more friendly playwright than the Stalinist one.