Representatives of both companies made the announcement at the beginning of the week.

"Its a small step for Nova, but a big step for whole Czech digitalisation plan," quoted Petr Dvorak, general director of TV Nova.

Both stations will exchange their analogue licences, which were valid until 2017/2018, for digital ones. In the first half of the next year, TV Nova and Prima TV will start their new digital channels.

"Our first new channel, which we consider for spring 2009, will concentrate mostly on women audience. We will called it Prima Club," Prima TV general director Marek Singer told FNE.

According to him, new channel definitely shouldn´t serve as a "garbage can" for the older programmes and shows of Prima TV.

Besides Nova and Prima, also all four channels of Czech television (www.ceskatelevize.cz) are available in digital version: CT1, CT2, news channel CT24 (www.ct24.cz) and sport channel CT4 Sport (www.ct4sport.cz).

Music channel Ocko (www.ocko.tv), commercial news channel Z1 (www.z1tv.cz) and regional channel RTV are also among those who broadcast thru DVB-T. On January 11, 2009, Barrandov TV (www.barrandov.tv) will begin digital broadcasting.

DTT signals are now available half the country. By 2012 four multiplexes and 16-20 channels are expected to be operating.