21 MASS MEDIA

In today's time MASS MEDIA have a great importance. All people around the world are curious and want to be informed about the world's events (event - událost). That's the reason why they read newspapers, listen to the radio or watch television.

I'm going to begin my speech with the oldest one of them and that is the press. (press - tisk/noviny/časopisy..)

Press is the oldest way of distributing information. First newspaper appeared in the 17th century. Nowadays we buy newspapers, magazines, brochures (broušrs - brožura/reklamní prospekt) and other kinds of press. Newspapers, which are issued (išjůd - vydávány) daily, are the most common, then magazines that are printed weekly, monthly or in another period. The Daily newspapers can be divided into two large groups. The first are the broadsheets (the quality press) and the second are the tabloids (popular press). The broadsheets are newspapers, in which there is only serious information. These newspapers are mainly old, some with more than a hundred-year tradition. They contain political, industrial and cultural news and there are also pages with finance matters and international news. As the most important Czech daily broadsheets I would mention Mladá fronta Dnes that I read and The Times from the world I would like to read.

The tabloids are newer than the broadsheets - the most popular is Blesk. They are printed on smaller papers and they use colours. They contain sensational stories about famous people, violent crimes and other topics that attract people. You can't find much information in there but there are lots of pictures!!

Now I would like to mention some information about the radio.

Radio was invented at the beginning of 19th century and it is another means of communication. It gives us a lot of information from the world and local recent events and also music. There are a lot of radio stations in the Czech Republic; we can divide them into two groups - state and private. One of state stations is Radiožurnál it is mostly a reporting station. Other stations broadcast for example classical music, or programmes specially prepared for a certain group of people. But radio broadcasting includes many private stations that produce short news every hour and then they are focused on some sorts of music like pop, rock and so on. The most famous are Evropa 2, Vltava or Rubi.

The last kind of mass media is television.

It is probably the most common kind of media. There are a lot of people who cannot imagine their lives without television (lives - životy). In the Czech Republic there are not as many television stations as in other countries. As you know we have four main channels. Two of them are state - ČT1 and ČT2. Prima and Nova are private commercial television channels. Their main income is from advertisements. So there are really a lot of them between the programmes or during the films. You can also watch some series, soap operas, and main news in the evening. But sometimes they broadcast very interesting films usually from Hollywood production. The other kind of TV station is the state one. These channels are financed from a charge, which everybody has to pay. (Even these who don't own a TV set.) State TVs broadcast more documentary and educational programmes than the private ones. Especially ČT2. You can also watch some music programmes and sport transmissions there.

As the science is moving on there are many new ways of communication for example the Internet.

It is an international network of computers. You can get information from the whole world just sitting at home in front of your PC. You can contact anyone, send emails, chat with your friends or just surf the Net.