Sun sets for man who gave Czechs the naked weathergirls

The camera peers in through the bedroom window. A beautiful young woman enters, naked. This is not a late-night porn channel ­ it is the weather forecast, Czech-style, and you can watch it every evening on the Republic's most popular television network, TV Nova.

The camera peers in through the bedroom window. A beautiful young woman enters, naked. This is not a late-night porn channel ­ it is the weather forecast, Czech-style, and you can watch it every evening on the Republic's most popular television network, TV Nova.

The idea is that the weather girl then gets dressed appropriately for tomorrow's weather. Lest Nova be accused of sexism, occasionally there is a naked weather man instead.

The trashy formula has allowed Nova to dominate the Czech television ratings, and transformed the man behind the network, Vladimir Zelezny, from an obscure screenwriter into a millionaire, and the most powerful media mogul in the country.

Yet Czechs were treated to a spectacle even more bizarre than Nova's weather forecasts a few days ago: the sight of a haggard Mr Zelezny being detained by the police in public view, and taken away for questioning. He has been charged with two separate offences, tax evasion and defrauding his creditors.

It is a near-unthinkable fall for the man who enjoyed so much influence over Czech public affairs that he was once referred to as "central Europe's Rupert Murdoch".

Not only that, he appeared to have taken on big capital and won, when he managed to rid himself of the American investors who initially funded Nova and left them owning nothing but a worthless company ­ a move which lost the Americans millions and ruined a planned merger. Mr Zelezny seemed untouchable.

Yet, until 1993, he was little known. There was one brief, distinguished moment in his early career, when as a young television employee he defied orders and broadcast pictures of Russian tanks driving through Prague during the 1968 invasion.

In 1993, he was in a group of six intellectuals who applied for a licence to start a private television network broadcasting classical music, cultural programmes and serious current affairs.

For outside investment, he struck a deal with the American firm Central European Media Enterprises (CME), headed by Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder empire. When the licence had been awarded, Mr Zelezny sidelined the other five who applied for it. Then he created Nova, with a mix of Latin American soap operas and news bulletins dominated by gory details of murders and road accidents. Intellectuals and the chattering classes despised the network, saying it was destroying the Czechs' long cultural tradition. But most of the population loved it, to judge by viewing figures.

In 1999 Mr Zelezny pulled an extraordinary stunt. He argued that the licence to broadcast was held not by the Nova company, which was 99 per cent owned by CME, but by an obscure holding company which he happened to control. Less than two years before, he had sold shares in the Nova company to CME for $28m (£20m). Now the company was in effect worthless.

Mr Zelezny ditched CME and set up Nova mark two, and carried on broadcasting.

Mr Lauder is suing the Czech government for failing to protect his investment ­ which may be why the authorities have suddenly moved against Mr Zelezny. But nobody is really sure why he is suddenly facing a possible jail sentence. Nor is it clear whether this is the end for the man who changed the Czech Republic's image from the cultural heart of Europe to the home of nude weather-girls. As one Czech observer put it: "Nobody ever goes to prison here."