Eino Sakari Repo (September 6, 1919,

Isokyrö Isokyrö (; ) is a municipality of Finland. It is located in the South Ostrobothnia region, from Vaasa. The municipality has a population of () and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is . In the name of the municip ...

– December 15, 2002,

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

) was the president of the state-owned Finnish Broadcasting Company from 1965 to 1969 and head of the radio from 1969 to 1974. His time as president was known as Repo's Radio. Eino S. Repo took part in the

Winter Winter is the coldest and darkest season of the year in temperate and polar climates. It occurs after autumn and before spring. The tilt of Earth's axis causes seasons; winter occurs when a hemisphere is oriented away from the Sun. Dif ...

and

Continuation War The Continuation War, also known as the Second Soviet–Finnish War, was a conflict fought by Finland and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. It began with a Finnish declaration of war on 25 June 1941 and ended on 19 ...

, and left the field in 1944 as captain. In 1948 he graduated as a Candidate of Philosophy from the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

; his main subject was

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

. Repo was a free literary critic and wrote criticisms to the '' Uusi Suomi'' newspaper and '' Parnasso'' magazine. Repo was known as a radical, and soon ''Uusi Suomi'' didn't like his writing anymore, and also he didn't have a very good relationship with the main critic Veikko Antero Koskenniemi. From 1958 to 1964 Repo was a reporter for '' Apu'' magazine, and then became a program manager at

MTV3 MTV3 (, ) is a Finnish commercial television channel owned and operated by the media company MTV Oy, originally launched on 13 August 1957 as a programming block, becoming its own channel on 1 January 1993. It had the biggest audience share ...

. When Finnish Broadcasting Company's president Einar Sundström retired in 1965, Repo became his successor as candidate of Agrarian Party. One of his supporters in Finnish Broadcasting Company was

Urho Kekkonen Urho Kaleva Kekkonen (; 3 September 1900 – 31 August 1986), often referred to by his initials UKK, was a Finnish politician who served as the eighth and longest-serving president of Finland from 1956 to 1982. He also served as Prime Minister ...

, then the

President of Finland The president of the Republic of Finland (; ) is the head of state of Finland. The incumbent president is Alexander Stubb, since 1 March 2024. He was elected president for the first time in 2024 Finnish presidential election, 2024. The presi ...

. During the Repo presidency, big reforms were made at Finnish Broadcasting Company. During the Repo era

left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social ...

student extremism was growing also in Finnish Broadcasting Company. Repo gave support to left-wing students and to their critical social programs, these offers started the so-called ''Repo's Radio''. Many critics wrote that Finnish Broadcasting Company during Repo presidency wasn't so much radio as it was a political institute. Finnish Broadcasting Company was blamed for supporting the lefts' victory in the

parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

elections in 1966. Repo was not elected to a second five-year term to Finnish Broadcasting Company, but he was made head of the radio. He retired in 1974. During the Zavidovo scandal, Kekkonen's advisor Antero Jyränki told in his questioning that he gave the place of documents which were the part of the Zavidovo notepad, to Repo. Jyränki was forced to resign after the incident and he was sentenced.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Repo, Eino S. 1919 births 2002 deaths People from Isokyrö 20th-century Finnish politicians Finnish military personnel of World War II 20th-century Finnish journalists