Euroish Broadcasting Corporation

EBC is the publicly-funded and owned broadcasting company in the Euro Republics who own and operate the primary television channels and radio services in the Euro Republics, as well as working with Euroish Telecom, to provide further development in online and broadband services.

It's work is funded principally through a "broadcast and broadband tax" paid by every Euroish citizen, €170 per year for every Euroish household that has access to a television, a radio, or broadband. Exceptionally wealthy people are required to pay at least €200 a year, whilst those on a lower income can pay for simply €105, and it is free for under 25s, meanwhile disabled people can pay for just €75 a year and over 75 recieve a free license. It's services are also funded through advertising money and donations given to the corporation from consumers.

Launch
The corporation was formed in 1928 to set up the first radio broadcast in the Euro Republics. 1943 saw the EBC set up a second national station, the Music Service, allowing the first station to focus almost exclusively on speech based programmes. The Empire Service followed in 1952 at the request of the goverment who wanted EBC transmissions to appeal to higher society with classical music and enlightening factual and cultural programmes.

The corporation was given the government grant in 1949 to set up television broadcasting in the country, and the first ERTV test transmissions began in 1950 coming on air a year later.

1970s to 1990s
As a response to the barrage of pirate radio stations in the 1960s, the Euroish goverment began forming regulations to turn radio into a fully regulated medium. In response, the EBC had a major reorganisation of their radio stations, inspired by the BBC's sucess in turning around their radio stations in 1967. On 10 October 1970, Radio National was turned into Radio 1 offering news, dramas and readings and entertainment programming, the Music Service was split between Radio 2 offering "easy listening", and Radio 3 offering popular music. The Empire Service became Radio 4 broadcasting classical music and upmarket cultural programming.

The EBC was also responsible for the development of the NICAM stereo standard. In recent decades, a number of additional channels and radio stations have been launched: ERTV 2 began in 1976 and ten years later Radio 5 was launched in 1986, as a live news station. The launch of TV3 in 1989 was perceived as a major threat by the EBC's management, particuarly as many successful ERTV programmes had been poached by the new service and significant money was spent on extending the EBC television network to appeal to a mass audience, although at the same time the EBC was under scrutiny from the Government for being "too mainstream" and told to focus more on arts, educational and current affairs content, with pressure put on the corporation to sell Radio 2, Radio 3 and ERTV 2, which was being relaunched around the same time as Network 2.

Instead, the EBC decided to seize the opportunity to step into satellite broadcasting, and with the new Astra satellite, purchased space to broadcast ERTV 1 and Network 2 on satellite, as well as drawing up plans for expanding into satellite broadcasting with an arts and cultural channel, 24 hour news channel, children's and youth channel, entertainment channel and a film channel, once the space was available. In 1992, ERTV 24, a rolling news channel, launched on satellite and the following year, ERTV Orbit was launched as the third general entertainment channel from the EBC.

Radio was also seen as a point of expansion, leading to Radio 3 being revamped as 3FM and introducing fresh talent at the expense most of it's older presenters who moved to Radio 2, whilst Radio 6 was launched in 1994 appealing to what it called the "post-Beatles generation" interested in neither station, with alternative and rock music, designed to compete with Virgin FM, which was the first national commercial adult contemporary station.