Czech Radio and the Ukrainian public broadcaster UA:PBC have signed a declaration of cooperation
Yesterday, Czech Radio signed an agreement of mutual cooperation with the Ukrainian public broadcaster UA:PBC at the international conference Radiodays Europe in Prague. René Zavoral, Director General of Czech Radio, and Andriy Taranov, a member of the Board of Directors of UA:PBC, confirmed that both public broadcasting institutions will continue to develop bilateral relations in the field of radio broadcasting as members of the European Broadcasting Union.
"I am so pleased that by signing this agreement, we can continue our cooperation with the public broadcaster of Ukraine, which we have strongly supported since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. For over a year now, and among our other forms of support, we have been providing continuous broadcasts of Ukrainian Radio via the audio portal mujRozhlas and the classic DAB+ and DVB-T2 networks. This is a crucial service, thanks to which we are able to provide Ukrainian citizens in the Czech Republic with daily access to information about current events in their native country. By signing the agreement of mutual cooperation, we will expand the radio and cultural exchange between the Czech Republic and Ukraine," said René Zavoral, Director General of Czech Radio.
"We have had great support from Czech Radio and other partners in the EBU from the beginning of the war, when we had to adapt quickly to maintain our broadcasts. Now we have new opportunities in terms of content. It's very broad, from news, which is the most important for us, to a lot of cultural content. Czech Radio is an important partner for us and I hope that Ukrainian culture will be present in the Czech Republic, just as Czech culture will be more present in Ukraine in the years to come," said Andriy Taranov, a member of the board of UA:PBC.
As part of the agreement, Czech Radio and UA:PBC have committed to a mutual exchange of programmes, mainly music and literature, as well as discussion programmes, features, radio plays and archive recordings. The signatory parties will also organise reciprocal visits of their staff and participate in common festivals, competition shows and other radio events.
Czech Radio has strongly supported Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion. In addition to the continuous broadcasting of Ukrainian Radio on the Czech Radio website and the DAB+ and DVB-T2 networks, last year the radio also created a special summary subpage for Ukrainian refugees, mujrozhlas.cz/ukrajina, which offers, for example, a practical Ukrainian-Czech Audiobook with lessons for children and adults, as well as fairy tales in Ukrainian by Czech writers. Czech Radio also offers weekly practical information to Ukrainian refugees living in the Czech Republic via the News for Ukrainians in the Czech Republic podcast.
On the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the conflict in Ukraine, the Czech Radio station Radiožurnál aired a podcast One Year In: The Sounds of War from Ukraine to Prague, which narrates the development of the war in Ukraine through telephone conversations, or rather interviews between two prominent voices of Czech Radio: host Jan Pokorný and war correspondent in Ukraine Martin Dorazín, who has been in Ukraine since January 2022. The special podcast series also reconstructs the entire year of aggression and provides a unique testimony about the courage, bravery and life of Czech Radio's permanent foreign correspondent in the war zone. All four episodes of the podcast are now available on the mujRozhlas audio portal.