TV Nova, which has achieved impressive audience share numbers with its domestic evening soapers Ulice (The Street), Pojistovna stestí (Luck Insurance), and Ordinace v ru?zové zahrade (Practice in the Rose Garden), plans to continue all three into the new season, which marks a growing trend away from reality TV knockoffs such as last fall's Big Brother franchise, which, um, tanked.

The notable exception to this is Superstar 3, the wildly popular Sunday talent search that continues to be a cash cow for the station and routinely becomes the hot topic around the water cooler the following day. One reason is probably Eduard Klezla, the "singing professor" whose daring sweaters and fussbudget demeanor work into the classic formula for the show.

Klezla sits on the three-member Superstar jury (it was dropped from four members and now runs no risk of a Czech Parliament–style deadlock) and enjoys torturing singing contestants with comment like, "You could be a great singer in a bar. On the Titanic."

The flamboyant Klezla has made a name for himself as a guru to a number of Czech pop singers, and Superstar itself has made a few contestants into household names, particularly rock singer Aneta Langerová. Certainly its winners have proven they have more staying power than any winners of Big Brother, at any rate.

Not to be outdone (despite a series of domestic soapers that have bombed and its own reality TV disaster, VyVolení, the ratings of which dropped precipitously after the first season) Prima TV is putting a big push into its new series Letiste (Airport). With the usual melodrama episodes built around the plucky members of a Central Airlines flight crew and their lovable Boeing 737, this show has also invested heavily in sets. Aside from the jumbo jet body, Letiste will also shoot with private planes, Lufthansa models and foreign locations.

Czech TV, meanwhile, although it is being taken out of the advertising game by state regulators, continues to go for popular hits and has launched its own soapers, a family drama about the Horák clan called, imaginatively, Horákovi, and a hockey team series to be called Poslední sezóna (Last Season).