Socialist Romania’s first TV spectacle would prove to be its last. The attempted eviction of a Hungarian pastor in the Transylvanian city of Timișoara (he had made a name for himself criticizing urban planning policy on Hungarian TV) prompted local protest, which became a citywide uprising, which became a countrywide revolution. The only one of the revolutions of ’89 to involve extensive violence, the uprising left more than a thousand dead and thousands more injured. Within ten days, twenty-year dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena, were executed by firing squad following a televised drumhead trial. Television broadcasts contributed to the rapid collapse of state power as the revolution went on, helping key players — the generals and politicians who, turning on Ceaușescu, would hastily assemble the postrevolutionary government — assess the correct moment to jump ship.…