Montreal’s Hungarian Television Program Returns for a Second Season

The Montreal Hungarian community’s weekly television broadcast, The Hungarians, will return for a second season to Canwest Global’s CH-14 cable channel. Beginning on March 6, 2005, the Hungarian-language community program will air half-hour broadcasts each Saturday at 9:30pm and will feature interviews with various leading figures of local Hungarian organizations. Last season’s hosts will all be returning for another 26 episodes on the community program. Csaba Nikolényi, a political science professor at Concordia University, will once again serve as the show’s main anchor. Co-hosts Christopher Adam, a graduate student at Carleton University in Ottawa, and Timea Varga, a teacher at the weekend Hungarian School of Montreal, are both returning for a second season. Zsolt Patakfalvi, a founding director of the popular program Travel Travel, on CFCF 12, is also returning as director for the upcoming season, while Mária Mailáth, editor of the Hungarian Chronicle, will again assist the director in selecting the guests for each program.

In its first season, The Hungarians earned the acclamation of both CH television and the Hungarian community, which contributed to the success of the program by providing the station with much needed feedback on the program and by advertising during commercial breaks. In the second season, viewers are encouraged to once again send any comments regarding the show to the program’s new e-mail address: hungary@chmontreal.com .

The program’s first season followed many years of silence, during which the Hungarian community of Montreal had no television broadcast at all. The previous season lasted from September 2003 to February 2004 and 26 broadcasts were aired, including a special show dedicated to commemorating the 1956 Hungarian revolution, a Christmas broadcast in December and on-site reports from the Raoul Wallenberg exhibit. The new season, which will last from March until September, will allow the hosts and producers of the studio-based program to feature events not covered during the course of last year’s fall-winter programming. Beginning on March 6, The Hungarians—or “A Montreáli Magyarság”—will fill in the time slot presently occupied by CH TV’s Polish broadcast.