Tele7ABC

Tele7ABC (Romanian pronunciation: [ˌtele ˈʃapte ˌabeˈtʃe]) was a television station in Romania, popular in the mid-1990s. One of the country's first three privately owned networks, it was launched in August 1994 by Mihai Tatulici and Altă legătură documentată defectors from the state-owned TVR network, with assistance from a group of investors. Though offering substantial pay to its on-air talents, it had a reduced budget for technical matters, and as such was always at risk at being surpassed by Altă legătură documentată commercial channels. Many of its prime time series were syndicated American shows filmed in previous decades, when Romania was under communism. In its first four years, Tele7 earned most of its dedicated viewership with talk shows (Including one hosted by Tatulici until his departure in 1995), investigative journalism, and breakfast shows. Its staff at that time featured many young entertainers and journalists who became household names in Romania, such as Mihaela Rădulescu, Teo Trandafir, and Mircea Badea.
Tele7's editorial stance was initially anti-communist, including by openly discussing crimes committed by the Securitate agency and the latter's alleged continuity with post-communist intelligence. This course was maintained for three more years after Tatulici's departure; during that interval, the station also lost viewers and employees to the rapidly expanding Pro TV. It fought off this pressure by increasing its entertainment package and pioneering infotainment formats that its rivals arguably copied. Its most recognized hosts of the period included Tudor Barbu, Radu Coșarcă, Gabriel Cotabiță, Gabriela Cristea, and Cornel Todea, in addition to Badea and Trandafir. These figures ended their contracts around 1998, as Tele7 was entering a deep financial crisis.
The first revival attempt came in August 1998, when Aristide Buhoiu took over as director of programming. Under his watch, Tele7 became a venue for communist nostalgia and the national-communist synthesis, for instance by consulting Securitate general Nicolae Pleșiță about his political views.