edition-dw-akademie-in-the-service-of-the-public-functions-and-transformation-of-media-in-developing-countries-pdf

Part III Serbia: Two Very Different Models of Successful Public Service MediaIn the 1990s, the two Serbian examples did not reflect the idealcase, but rather the existence of an absolute public serviceideology with strong innovative force but restricted resources(in the case of B92) on the one hand, and no inherent publicservice principles, but adequate resources (in the case of RTS)on the other. Today, due to political developments and thuschanges in the ideology as well as trainings, RTS is characterizedby a public service ideology and generally has sufficientfinancial and technical resources. Therefore, it comes closestto the ideal type of public service media. B92, in contrast, hadto exchange its strong public service ideology for secured resources.Due to its increased commercialization and focus onentertainment it cannot be viewed as a public service broadcasteranymore. However, as was pointed out, some of itsprinciples remain; they are the reason why the commercialbroadcaster still has more public service characteristics thanall other Serbian private media. Since Veran Matic, one of thefounders of B92, is still the editor-in-chief of the broadcaster’snews department, B92’s news and information programs arestill of high quality. Other examples for this are its investigativeprograms as well as its high-quality political talk shows,among others.A comparison of the program structure of RTS and B92 showsthat, in 2008, B92 dedicated more time of its overall broadcastingto informative and news programs (43.3%) than RTS 1(33.8%) or RTS 2 (37.5%). 138 However, with 23.1% it had a significantlystronger focus on entertainment than RTS 1 (13.3%) andRTS 2 (4.7%). In contrast to the official public service broadcaster,B92 did not offer any culture and arts, religious or hobbyprograms. Further, compared to RTS it provided very few educationaland children's programs. 139 This comparison was madein 2008, however, and since then B92’s programming (with thechange of the owners) has been even more commercialized.As this chapter points out, in Serbia it was opted for implementinga public service ideology in a well-established mediaoutlet rather than guaranteeing stable resources for a publicservice ideology-driven young media outlet. This is one possibleoption, as the generally successful transformation processof RTS reveals. However, it can be assumed that introducinga completely new ideology in an institution with more than3,000 employees is more difficult and risky than developinga financing model that secures resources for an institutionwhere the ideology is truly inherent already. After the end ofthe Milošević era in 2000, as revealed earlier, B92 offered idealconditions for that. It would have been highly interesting to seethe results.Program Structure of DifferentChannels in Comparison (in 2008)Genre RTS 1 RTS 2 B92 PINK RTV1 RTV2Informative/news 33,8 37,5 43,3 15,4 27,5 24,1Films and series 24,4 8,6 12,6 34,6 28,3 24,0Entertainment 13,3 4,7 23,1 31,7 8,2 3,1Commercials 9,4 3,6 11,6 16,7 4,6 2,7Total (4 genres) 80,9 54,4 90,6 98,4 68,6 53,9Sports 3,9 17,9 2,2 1,6 1,9Total (5 genres) 84,8 72,3 92,8 98,4 70,2 55,8Educational 2,4 9,8 4,5 9,6 7,8Children 6,2 5,1 2,7 0,4 5,4 3,9Culture and arts 2 6,6 7,0 20,8Hobby 4,6 4,4 1,2 4,8 5,1Religion 1,7 0,7 1,1Youth 0 0,8Other 0,1 2,3 4,7Source: Matic, 2009138 139Matic 2009. Ibid., full table can be consultedin the Appendix.Edition DW Akademie In the Service of the Public 173