Media Study - Medija centar Beograd

2.2.5 COMPARISON WITH EU MEMBER STATES
Regional broadcasting
The three selected Member States of the European Union chosen as benchmark models for Serbia in this study
have developed different models for television and radio at regional, local and community levels
Number of regions:
Austria (8.5 million inhabitants): 9 regional radio and TV have been established in compliance with the public
administrative entities of federal states.
Germany (83 million inhabitants): 11 regional broadcasters with radio and TV have been established covering 16
federal states. This structure is almost comparable with that found in the United Kingdom (55 million inhabitants)
which has 11 regional public service radios and TV as well as 14 commercial TV stations.
In Scandinavia, Denmark (5.5 million inhabitants) has established 8 regional TV stations and 11 regional radio
stations following geographical rather than administrative divisions. Sweden (approx. 9 million inhabitants) has 19
regional TV stations and 26 radio stations. Norway (4.8 million inhabitants) has 11 regional television and 13 radio
stations.
Organization and financing:
Point Nr. 8.22 of resolution 1636 (2008) Indicators for Media in a Democracy of the Council of Europe states that
“private” media should not be managed by the state or state controlled companies. Regional TV may by EU
decisions be defined as public service functions and eligible to funding through license fees 4 .
In Austria, Germany and Denmark the regional broadcasters are mainly organized as part of the public service
broadcasting system. The average number of inhabitants per regional broadcaster is in Denmark roughly ½ million,
in Austria 1 million and in Germany 7, 5 million people, making Germany a less relevant model to study as
inspiration for a regional system in Serbia. The United Kingdom has parallel systems of license financed and
commercially financed broadcasters but both have public service obligations. However, with 5 million inhabitants
per region the situation in the United Kingdom cannot be copied in Serbia.
While the regional radios in Scandinavia and the regional radio/TV stations in Austria all are “regional studios”
within the national public service broadcaster, regional TV in Denmark are locally based, independent legal entities.
Denmark’s regional TV stations are organized as non-profit independent companies with an advisory board of civil
society representatives monitoring the programming and electing the board of directors. The board of directors is
responsible for hiring and dismissing the director, and has the overall responsibility for budget, accounts and
programme policy. The director is editor-in-chief and has the sole responsibility for the daily programmes, the
spending and the accounts. 5 License fees for regional TV and the public service obligations for the regional TV
stations are decided by the Parliament.
In all the three countries the regional broadcasters base their income on license fees and in Austria this is
supplemented with advertisements. Denmark tendered a commercial national channel with obligations to run 7
new regional broadcasters but nobody was interested in bidding for this.
4 Please refer to Chapter 6, regarding state aid rules.
5 The boards of the regional TV stations are represented by 2 representatives in the board of the national TV2 Denmark. The regional windows in
the national channel are determined by negotiations between the national broadcaster and the regional system. Service programmes for
specific institutions can be paid by local authorities or public institutions in the region and placed outside the daily windows for regional
broadcasting.
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