For other uses, see: Cool TV (disambiguation)

Cool TV (disambiguation)

The name Cool TV may represent:* Cool TV, a television channel in Hungary and Romania* CoolTV, a defunct cable specialty channel in Canada* TheCoolTV, a television network in the United States...

Cool TV is a Hungarian

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 television channel, which migrated to Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

 after being threatened with closure by Hungarian authorities. The channel was launched in 2004 in the Hungarian language

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

, and in 2005 it also started broadcasting cool stuff.

Cool TV had a pioneering role, including the broadcasting of a homosexual-themed series in Hungary, Queer as Folk

Queer as Folk (US TV series)

Queer as Folk is an American and Canadian television series co-production, produced by Showtime and Temple Street Productions, which was based on the British series of the same name, created by Russell T Davies...

, including male strip-tease scenes, objected to by some. Moreover, it went on to broadcast provocative, iconoclast

Iconoclasm

Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually with religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major political or religious changes...

 content, such as self-harm (Jackass

Jackass (TV series)

jackass is an American reality series, originally shown on MTV from 2000 to 2002, featuring people performing various dangerous, crude, ridiculous, self-injuring stunts and pranks...

), weird lifestyles,and a controversial animated short series entitled "Hungarikum" (a term used to refer to uniquely Hungarian products, esp. cuisine). Epic figures of Hungarian history (Lajos Kossuth

Lajos Kossuth

Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva was a Hungarian lawyer, journalist, politician and Regent-President of Hungary in 1849. He was widely honored during his lifetime, including in the United Kingdom and the United States, as a freedom fighter and bellwether of democracy in Europe.-Family:Lajos...

, István Széchenyi

István Széchenyi

Széchenyi committed suicide by a shot to his head on April 8, 1860. All Hungary mourned his death. The Academy was in official mourning, along with the most prominent persons of the leading political and cultural associations...

, György Dózsa

György Dózsa

György Dózsa was a Székely Hungarian man-at-arms from Transylvania, Kingdom of Hungary who led a peasants' revolt against the kingdom's landed nobility...

) were depicted performing zoophile

Zoophilia

Zoophilia, from the Greek ζῷον and φιλία is the practice of sex between humans and non-human animals , or a preference or fixation on such practice...

 sex acts on horses, as well as torturing men and preteen schoolgirls. This scandalized Hungarian nationalists and the political right. http://index.hu/kultur/media/hunga4601/

When the Virgin Mary (traditionally considered the heavenly queen of Hungary) was depicted as having sex with the papal Swiss Guard

Swiss Guard

Swiss Guards or Schweizergarde is the name given to the Swiss soldiers who have served as bodyguards, ceremonial guards, and palace guards at foreign European courts since the late 15th century. They have had a high reputation for discipline, as well as loyalty to their employers...

 in an episode of Hungarikum, the Vatican

Holy See

The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...

 demanded state interference as required by the Concordatum treaty. In response, the entire Cool TV station crew fled to Romania, claiming a loophole in Hungarian law which allows it to continue selling and distributing its programme to Hungarian cable TV companies, yet remain outside Hungarian jurisdiction

Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction is the practical authority granted to a formally constituted legal body or to a political leader to deal with and make pronouncements on legal matters and, by implication, to administer justice within a defined area of responsibility...

.