Česká televize zruší samostatnou kulturní redakci Czech Television will abolish its separate cultural editorial office

Prague - Czech Television (ČT) will abolish its separate cultural editorial office and integrate it into domestic news, which is led by Ondřej Neumann. The information was provided by the Týden.cz server, citing the director of news ČT Milan Fridrich and editor-in-chief Michal Petrov.
    In the decision, according to both managers contacted, "money and viewership" did not play a role. Long-time head of the cultural editorial office Otakar Svoboda remains as an editor and culture presenter on the ČT24 program. Neither Neumann nor Svoboda could be reached this evening.
    According to Fridrich, the cultural section of ČT ceased to fulfill its function, was lagging, and was falling behind. "In the state it was in before, it lacked meaning. Cultural journalism of public television should offer a much broader scope than just openings, book and film news," Fridrich told the server.
    According to him, the program has long lacked topics from popular culture. Cultural journalism should focus more on, for example, design, architecture or the internet and capture trends that young people live by, Fridrich believes.
    According to the server, the heads of ČT struggled to motivate the cultural department to show greater interest in such matters, which is why they decided to make a radical cut. "For now, we have integrated it into the domestic section and in the future, there may be some new unit arising that will address these social, cultural, and civilization topics. But maybe not," hinted Fridrich. According to Petrov, this is a definitive solution.
    The cultural editorial office of ČT has recently faced sharp criticism from outside as well. For example, Lidové noviny (LN) critically reported on the trip of the head of the cultural section Svoboda with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra to Sydney. "In no way are we reacting to external criticism with this organizational change. These are systematic steps that we have planned for about three months," Fridrich confirmed to Týden.cz.