Southeast Europe

Bihari Napló and the Szatmári Firss Újság are as successful as the Szabadság. This
shows that the popularity of these newspapers is determined by more complex reasons
(Balló, 2000).
7.3 Radio
The state-owned public radio (AM) station has a Hungarian-language broadcasting
everyday from Bucharest (1 hour a day), Târgu Mureş (5 hours a day), Cluj (4 hours a
day) and Timişoara (1 hour a day). These reach from 10 to 100% of the potential ethnic
Hungarian listeners in Romania. State radio also broadcasts in the language of other
ethnic minorities, e.g. in German from Bucharest and from Timişoara (Balló, 2000).
There are also private (FM) radio stations. The number of Hungarian or other ethnic
minority-language radio stations or programmes lies far behind the proportion of these
ethnic minorities, as related to the whole population. Ethnic Hungarians in Romania
could have and maintain several 24-hour local, regional and national Hungarianlanguage
private stations. As compared to this need and capacity, there are only a few
such local stations and some local private stations broadcasting a few hours in
Hungarian or German or Serbian and so on, too. But a city like Cluj, with one of the
biggest ethnic Hungarian communities, lacks such a private station (Balló, 2000).
7.4 Television
The state-owned public television (TVR) has a regular Hungarian programme on
Channel 1 (TVR1, a national channel) and on Channel 2 (TVR2, another national
channel under construction which does not reach all the ethnic Hungarian potential
public yet) with about 3 hours of broadcasting a week, but these times have been
diminishing, because of several reforms adopted by the TVR board, since 1990. The
TVR broadcasts in Hungarian on Channel 1 and on Channel 2 also from Cluj, last about
an hour a week altogether. The state television studio in Timişoara only broadcasts in
Hungarian 15 minutes a week (Balló, 2000).
However, no Hungarian-language national private TV station exists, and many cities
with an important ethnic Hungarian population also lack such local stations. There are a
few local or cable TVs, however, which broadcast in Hungarian in Eastern
Transylvania, in the so-called Szeklerland (Balló, 2000).
7.5 Internet
With regard to Internet sites, many are directly run by Hungarian-language publications
and some are actually run from Hungary. Organisations with offices outside the region,
like the US-based Hungarian Human Rights Foundation, also maintain websites. The
only Hungarian language Transylvanian “Internet newspaper”, called the Transindex is
edited in Cluj (Balló, 2000).
8. CONCLUSION
There are more than 1,000 years of Romanian-Hungarian common history in the
Transylvanian territory while conflicts have been present. The parties involved have
claimed the Transylvanian territory, especially during the last centuries. President
Clinton outlined in a conference about the minority problem in South-Eastern Europe, at
San Francisco, on April 15, 1999: “Who is going to define the future of this part of the
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