Tens of thousands of Czechs flocked to Prague's Wenceslas Square last month to support striking journalists at the state television station.
The crisis began as a newsroom dispute over the appointment of a new general director and it has spiralled into the biggest social and political dispute since the Velvet revolution.
More than a decade after the collapse of communism, the relationship between state power and press independence remains unresolved.
From Russia, where a Kremlin campaign has been under way to destroy independent television, to the Czech Republic, Eastern Europe's ruling elite refuses to recognise limits to state interference in broadcasting.
According to Rick Fawn, director of the centre for Russian and east European studies at the University of St Andrews, the case reflects a deep-seated dispute over the nature of civil society: "It was the leader of the opposition, Vaclav Klaus, who was driving the issue of privatising Czech public television and this opened the debate."
The Czech crisis demonstrated a healthy democracy in action, he added.
Elsewhere, the situation was not so positive, said Peter Frank, professor of Russian politics at Essex University.
Poland's leaders moved swiftly to reform the politically influenced system through which members of the Polish national television and radio board were selected.
But the Czech crisis seems to have had no impact on Russian president Vladimir Putin's campaign to neuter broadcasters independent of the Kremlin, despite widespread coverage of the dispute on state and private channels: "Politicians, especially in Russia, developed in a culture where the media was controlled. They recognise that the dominant media is television, which can bring in or lose votes, and to that extent they are sensitive.
"Unlike in the Czech Republic, the intelligentsia in Russia is supine. The energy and influence of Czech intellectuals acts as a balance against the country's totalitarian history," Professor Frank said.