A group of award-winning Czech artists are facing prison terms for hacking into a TV weather broadcast to air footage of a nuclear explosion.

All six members of the artist group, Ztohoven have been named in the complaint filed by Czech Television after the group hacked their Panoram program last June and interrupted their airing of peaceful scenes of the local countryside by video clips to make it appear as if a nuclear bomb had been blasted.

The video clip so panicked the television viewers that they flooded the network with phone calls.

State prosecutor Dusan Ondracek said the artists would be charged with "scaremongering and propagating false information" which could 'earn' them a prison term of up three years each.

The trial is expected to commence within the month.

Prior to the complaint, the group was accorded an award last month by the Czech National Gallery for their work entitled Media Reality. They also got an additional $24,000 prize money for their opus.

"This piece - alongside all of the art the group Ztohoven is making - is crossing the border from art into something more social," said Milan Knizak from the National Gallery.

"The artists are trying to escape from the cage of art, and into real life. They would like to influence their own lives, and other people's lives."