7 March 1957: RTP begins regular television broadcasts in Portugal

At 9.30 pm on Thursday 7 March 1957 a shrill bell rang in a former film studio at Lumiar, on the northern edge of Lisbon, and a voice called for silence. The RTP ident went on air with its opening march. The assistant director gave a signal, and the announcer Maria Helena Varela Santos smiled into the camera and said “boa noite, senhores espectadores”: good evening, viewers.3 sources3 sources

She had learned the trade at Rádio Ribatejo, a station her father ran, and had auditioned for RTP the previous September, at 22. Years later she remembered memorising a short text and nearly panicking when the little red light came on. For that night's work she was paid 100 escudos.1 source1 source

About two hours of television followed, made in one studio with three cameras. Domingos de Mascarenhas, RTP's head of production, spoke for about eight minutes on the present and future of the company. Then came Canções a Granel, a variety show with the singers Maria de Lurdes Resende and Rui de Mascarenhas, the Domingos Vilaça band and the young comic Raul Solnado, who was paid 1,000 escudos.2 sources2 sources

At ten Gomes Ferreira and Luís Arnaut Pombeiro read the news from a corner of the studio the staff called “the cave”, then talked over newsreel film. Everything except film went out live, and RTP's programme inspectors logged every slip minute by minute.1 source1 source

The night ended with a filmed documentary on the airline TAP, a ballet to music by Tchaikovsky, Os Enganos do Amor, and a short last bulletin at about 11.25 pm. That morning the newspaper O Século had warned its readers not to expect too much.2 sources2 sources

The trial never ended. RTP counts its age from that night. Vasco Hogan Teves, who worked in its newsroom that year and later wrote the company's official history, puts it simply: on 7 March 1957 RTP put a broadcast on the air and never stopped.2 sources2 sources

Portugal came to television late. It was ruled by the Estado Novo, the authoritarian regime António de Oliveira Salazar had built in the early 1930s, with a censored press and no free elections. Teves notes that Portugal and Spain, two countries the Second World War had passed by, were among the last in western Europe. Spain began regular broadcasts on 28 October 1956, for about 3,000 sets in Madrid.3 sources3 sources

The groundwork was done by engineers at the state radio, the Emissora Nacional. A television study group there got an extra 500,000 escudos in 1953, but a ministerial order of 9 November 1953 told it to go no further than study, because the government thought it premature to take a position. A private company with heavy foreign capital offered to build a network if it could have a monopoly on selling sets for a time, a condition the government would not accept.1 source1 source

Things moved under Marcello Caetano, the law professor who was Minister of the Presidency. On 27 January 1955 he appointed a commission to propose a solution, and it reported in August. Decree-Law 40 312, published on 9 September, made installing a set subject to authorisation and licence fees and ordered existing ones to be registered. Decree-Law 40 341, published on 18 October, provided for a company to run television as a public service with a 20-year monopoly.1 source1 source

RTP was founded on 15 December 1955 with a capital of 60 million escudos, split equally between the state, the private radio stations and shares sold to the public through the banks. The chairman was Camilo de Mendonça, a 33-year-old agronomist, Caetano's friend and a trusted man of the single party, the União Nacional.3 sources3 sources

Caetano signed the concession contract for the government at São Bento on 16 January 1956, and told RTP's directors what the government expected of them.1 source1 source

According to Teves, Caetano had to overcome Salazar's opposition, and some say Salazar came round only after Francisco Franco, Spain's dictator, urged him not to lose more time. Caetano even oversaw the drafting of RTP's statutes. The engineers worked on a small budget: one of them, Lopes da Silva, later said they had made the cheapest television in Europe.2 sources2 sources

Lisbon first saw Portuguese television at a fun fair. O Século ran the Feira Popular in the Palhavã park, where the Gulbenkian Foundation stands today, and gave RTP a plot beside the shooting galleries and the fried-dough stalls. Firms bidding for RTP's contracts lent the equipment: RCA a 0.1-kilowatt transmitter, a camera and 53 sets, and the German company Fernseh a second camera and 20 more sets. A 50-metre mast rose over a prefabricated pavilion whose studio was partly walled in glass, so the crowd could watch programmes being made.1 source1 source

The first programme went out at 9.30 pm on 4 September 1956. Alves Barbosa, who had just won the Volta a Portugal cycle race, pedalled on rollers in the studio, and Benfica's table-tennis champions played a few points. Sets in shop windows, cafés and clubs carried the pictures across the city. The next night the crowd in the Praça dos Restauradores stopped the traffic, and the police had to open a lane for cars and people.2 sources2 sources

The trials ran every evening except Wednesday until 30 September: 24 evenings and about 50 hours of programmes. By the end, private owners had registered the first thousand sets. RTP then moved into a disused film studio on the Alameda das Linhas de Torres, at Lumiar. The gallows built there for the film O Cerro dos Enforcados was still standing among the fig trees, and the main stage, of 296 square metres, became the studio.3 sources3 sources

The signal came from a small Siemens transmitter of 1 kilowatt that had been ordered for the Montejunto station. It was set up instead in a room of the navy's transmitting station at Monsanto, the wooded hill on Lisbon's western edge, and fed from Lumiar by a microwave link. From 3 December 1956 it carried test cards and films: travelogues lent by embassies, adult-education documentaries and the first series seen in Portugal, the American Chevy Show and Perry Como Show.2 sources2 sources

On 7 December, after Soviet troops had crushed the uprising in Hungary, RTP went silent for two minutes in solidarity. From mid-January 1957, at the request of set owners in the Lisbon and Setúbal districts, the trials ran twice a day, Sundays included. Live announcers appeared from 5 February, and a 15-minute news block from the 15th.1 source1 source

The real test came in February. Queen Elizabeth II flew in on 16 February 1957, landing at the Montijo air base across the Tagus, and spent the weekend aboard the royal yacht Britannia off Setúbal. On the morning of the 18th a historic royal barge brought her to the Cais das Colunas, the riverside steps of Lisbon's main square, to begin the state visit. RTP had no outside-broadcast van yet, so it covered the visit on film.2 sources2 sources

Manuel Figueira, who ran RTP's film and news section, and João Baptista Rosa, an army lieutenant and cameraman, rounded up every 16 mm operator they knew, from cine-club amateurs to the photographer Augusto Cabrita, who bought a Paillard camera for the occasion. Of the 14 men filming, only Hélder Mendes was on RTP's staff. Baptista Rosa used his uniform to get past security, opened the door of the state coach and filmed the Queen and President Craveiro Lopes smiling inside.1 source1 source

Film was rushed to the Tóbis laboratory, cut by hand and shown the same night, with the commentary read live by an announcer. Teves dates the first pictures, of the arrival at Montijo, to the evening of the 17th; a compilation of about an hour and a half closed the coverage on the 23rd. Estimates at the time put the audience, packed round sets in cafés and public places in the Lisbon, Setúbal and Santarém areas, at a little under a million.1 source1 source

RTP also supplied film to Brazil and to United Press, and helped the BBC, which flew its footage home on an RAF jet; about three hours later Britain was watching its Queen in Lisbon. Teves writes that some saw the coverage as hastening the start of regular broadcasts, because viewers had become a pressure group. Two weeks after the Queen left, RTP went on the air for good.1 source1 source

The schedule took shape quickly. On 11 March RTP broadcast its first play, Gil Vicente's Monólogo do Vaqueiro, the sixteenth-century piece with which, in the words of RTP's head of drama, Portuguese theatre began. Rui de Carvalho played the herdsman, with 40 extras. The budget ran to 50 contos (50,000 escudos): about half went on fees, most of the rest on costumes and props. Live drama became the touchstone of the schedule, though films still filled most of the air time.2 sources2 sources

On 13 March came the first Portuguese feature film, Fado, História de uma Cantadeira, with Amália Rodrigues. Quizzes gave away television sets: the first, run with the magazine Rádio e Televisão from 5 April, was won by a man from Cartaxo, who took home a Siemens set with a remote control. RTP's online chronology instead names Quem Sabe, Sabe, presented by Artur Agostinho, as the first quiz, also in April.2 sources2 sources

There was no Telejornal yet. At first RTP borrowed the news agency copy delivered to the Emissora Nacional, fetched by car; later the agency sheets came to Lumiar by bicycle courier, with the censor's cuts already made, and American newsreels came by plane. In June two cameramen followed President Craveiro Lopes to Brazil and sent their film home by air each day.1 source1 source

In October Teves, then a young newsroom writer, flew to the Azores with the cameraman Carlos Tudela after the Capelinhos volcano began erupting off the island of Faial. On 13 October, by Teves's account, Tudela and a newspaper reporter jumped ashore on the new island of volcanic cinders. RTP's total for 1957 was 665 hours on air.1 source1 source

RTP had bought its network from Siemens in December 1956, and it came on air over the following 17 months. The permanent Monsanto transmitter and the Lousã station, serving Coimbra and the centre, started on 23 November 1957. Monte da Virgem, at Vila Nova de Gaia across the Douro from Porto, followed on New Year's Eve with a play called Noite de S. Silvestre. Montejunto opened on 10 March 1958, and the Fóia relay in the Algarve's Serra de Monchique on 25 April. By RTP's count, the four main stations then covered 44 per cent of the mainland's area and 58 per cent of its people.3 sources3 sources

Sets were dear. In April 1957 RTP's own shop on the Praça de Londres, in Lisbon, advertised them from 5,900 escudos with a 43 cm screen and from 7,800 with a 53 cm one, or from 185 escudos a month over 36 months. The media historian Francisco Rui Cádima gives a higher range for 1957: 7,990 to 18,800 escudos. The Diário de Notícias reckoned in 2017 that a set cost nine months' wages for an unskilled worker. RTP's board noted that a good part of the sets in use stood in public places.4 sources4 sources

Demand still beat every forecast. RTP had planned on 1,000 sets sold in its first year; in 1957 the magazine Rádio e Televisão reported that Lisbon alone had already bought more. By December 1958, 32,000 sets had been imported, about 2,000 a month that year, a pace RTP's board called four times faster than expected. From 1 January 1958 each set paid a licence of 360 escudos a year. A brochure handed out at the Feira had promised it would cost less than one escudo a day.3 sources3 sources

The new medium was watched from the start. Prior censorship suited films but not live programmes, so RTP adopted the solution used in radio: a delegate of the SNI, the regime's propaganda and information office, oversaw scripts and decided with the head of production whether live programmes could go ahead. RTP passed the first screening of texts to its own literary adviser. The historian Rita Luís describes a censorship aimed at people as much as words, which decided who was fit to appear on screen, interviewers included.1 source1 source

A decree of 1 April 1957 barred television from showing events held where minors were not admitted, such as fado, variety theatre and boxing. Caetano softened it: a clarification recorded by the censorship commission for public shows in May 1957 said the rule should not be applied with the technical rigour of its wording.1 source1 source

Inside RTP the tone was set by men of the regime. Domingos de Mascarenhas, the head of production, was a film critic who had studied the regime's doctrine of the National Revolution. Maria Armanda Falcão, one of the first faces of the Feira broadcasts, recalled that he wanted her to sign off with “até amanhã, se Deus quiser”, until tomorrow, God willing, and then told her she had too much personality to keep the job. The director Artur Ramos said he was sacked after four years on information from the PIDE, the political police.1 source1 source

The journalists' union did not accept that RTP employed journalists, so its newsroom staff were called “redactores”, writers; they could join the union only after the revolution of 25 April 1974. Caetano, meanwhile, used the medium early: on 5 June 1957 he spoke from Lumiar for nine minutes on ten years of American aid to Europe. Salazar's first live televised speech came in June 1958, and that September, Cádima notes, he still ranked the press first among the media.4 sources4 sources

RTP still counts its age from 7 March 1957, and chose the 23rd anniversary in 1980 to begin regular colour broadcasting. The service that opened that night kept its state monopoly until the private channel SIC went on air in October 1992.3 sources3 sources

People trained in the Feira pavilion and the Lumiar studio shaped Portuguese television for decades. Fernando Lopes, in 1957 a typist who hung around the newsroom's 16 mm film, became a film director and later ran one of RTP's channels.2 sources2 sources

The Lumiar studio, taken as a stopgap in 1956, stayed RTP's production centre for half a century. RTP bought the site in 1977 and moved out in 2007, fifty years after the first regular broadcast.2 sources2 sources