EITB

Euskal Irrati Telebista

Type	Media
Country	Spain France
Headquarters	Bilbao, Biscay
Broadcast area	Basque Autonomous Community Navarre French Basque Country
Owner	Department of Culture of the Basque Government
Launch date	May 20, 1982
Affiliation	FORTA
Official website	www.eitb.eus

Euskal Irrati Telebista (EITB, Basque Radio-television) is the Basque Autonomous Community's public broadcast service. Its main brand is Euskal Telebista (ETB, Basque Television).

EiTB is the leading media group in the Basque Autonomous Community with four domestic television channels and five radio stations. Their channels are also broadcast in the whole Basque Country, and people in nearby territories such as Burgos (in Castile and León), Cantabria, Huesca (province) and Zaragoza (province) (in Aragon), La Rioja, and Pyrénées-Atlantiques (in France) can also get the signal. It has been running since 1982 and during this period it has established itself as a major media organisation, connecting with more than a million people every day. The majority of EiTB's broadcasts deal with local news and entertainment.

On 20 May 1982 the Basque Parliament unanimously approved the law that set up Euskal Irrati Telebista and on 23 November, the radio channel Euskadi Irratia started broadcasting. ETB, for its part, reached Basque households at midnight on 31 December 1982 with a presentation by the Basque Lehendakari Carlos Garaikoetxea and its programmes were regularized, starting from 16 February in the following year. At the time about 30 people worked in the ETB centre in Iurreta to provide programmes exclusively in Basque.