<span>Sixty years ago, the Kojál transmitter in the Vyškov region was put into operation.</span>

Prague – The Kojál transmitter in the Vyškov region, which began broadcasting a signal 60 years ago, on March 3, 1959, was the tallest structure in Czechoslovakia at the time. The official launch of operations, however, did not go without problems, as memories from witnesses recall that the start was accompanied by outages. The technical difficulties were eventually resolved, and the transmitter, whose base lies 600 meters above sea level, soon covered a quarter of the republic with television and radio signals – northern Moravia, eastern Bohemia, and even southern Slovakia.

The foundations of the transmitter began to be built in June 1957; the mast was then constructed with the help of a crane, but later the individual parts were pulled up along the completed sections with a winch and then secured in place. Upon completion, the Kojál transmitter measured 322 meters and in its upper part carried twelve antennas, which on August 21, 1968, were among the last to broadcast the signal of free television. However, Soviet occupying troops eventually arrived here in the evening, and broadcasting had to end.

The original structure served until the mid-1980s when a new one was built right next to the original mast, the top of which is 339.5 meters above the ground. Today, Kojál is the third tallest structure in the Czech Republic, following the Krašov transmitter (completed in 1981, standing 347.5 meters tall) and Liblice (1976, 355 meters). Other types of constructions include the record 301-meter-high chimney of the Prunéřov II Power Plant and the 180-meter-high wind farm in Zlatá Olešnice III. The tallest building is the 116-meter-high AZ Tower in Brno.

The transmitter is now practically unmanned, supervised by a center in Prague. There is only a manager and a service technician on site. "When I started there in 1986, there were crews of people working shifts to monitor the transmitter, as well as other service crews. Up to 30 people could cycle through there in total," said the property manager, sixty-year-old Zdeněk Králíček, to ČTK.

According to him, everything changed at the beginning of the 1990s, when staff levels were reduced, and later with the advent of digitalization, which transformed the oversight of the transmitter even more radically.