International Radio and Television Organisation
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The International Radio and Television Organisation (official name in French: Organisation Internationale de Radiodiffusion et de Télévision or OIRT), more often called Intervision (Russian Интервидение, Polish Interwizja), was an East European network of radio and television broadcasters established in 1946 with the primary purpose of exchanging productions between its members.
The members of the OIRT were Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the USSR. From 1950 onwards, its headquarters were located in Prague. Finland as a neutral country was also the member of EBU, which was the corresponding West-European organisation and used Western FM bands instead of Eastern OIRT FM bands in broadcasting. The prefix inter- refers to the internationalism which was (hoped to be) one of the key traits of communism.
Between 1977 and 1980 the OIRT organised four contests of the Intervision Song Contest in Sopot, Poland, in an attempt to emulate the highly successful Eurovision Song Contest.
In 1993 it merged with the European Broadcasting Union (which runs the Eurovision Network).de:Organisation Internationale de Radiodiffusion et de Télévision pl:Międzynarodowa Organizacja Radia i Telewizji fr:Organisation Internationale de Radiodiffusion et de Télévision ru:Интервидение