MANJINE I MEDIJI NA ZAPADNOM BALKANU - RRPP

Television’s Second Channel are given to the biggest national minority and even the editing
of the whole channel is under their control.
More state concern for minority media
Minority media are developed the most in Serbia (Vojvodina) and Macedonia, where they
were present even before the disintegration of Yugoslavia. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, they
practically do not exist. Minority media today are in public, privately owned or owned by a
variety of associations and foundations. According to our findings, minority media which
existed before the disintegration of Yugoslavia have been mostly privatized and initial capital
for creating new ones has usually been invested by private persons, and less by the state and
local communities. If such a media outlet (especially radio or TV station) is founded with
private capital, it is vulnerable to the interests of profit of the capital investor. Some of these
media were soon shut down if they did not become self-sustainable through marketing. Help
from the state or local communities does not exist (BiH) or is insufficient. Some minority
media, faced with the challenges of profit or lack of sustainability, have abandoned their
editorial concepts based on public interest. Yet, as was observed during the survey, in
particular in Bosnia-Herzegovina, there have been attempts of media operations in publicprivate
partnership, i.e. successful attempts to link an interesting commercial program with
public interest, usually by using donations provided by foreign funds. An especially
interesting situation regards a Roma program on Macedonian Television’s Second Channel,
which is made by independent production. Analysts in Macedonia believe this demonstrates
lack of interest on part of the public service to work on covering issues faced by Roma in
Macedonia.
In order to create a radio or TV station, in addition to ensuring funding and specific staff,
especially journalists, presenters and program hosts, the priority issue has been how to ensure
a frequency license, because frequency spectrums with good frequencies are mostly
exhausted. An exception is Macedonia, where account was taken in the allocation of
analogous frequencies to satisfy cultural pluralism 17 . Digitalization offers new opportunities
for maintaining and expanding pluralism. As the digitalization process in Serbia and
Macedonia is nearly completed (an exception are BiH and Montenegro, where it is going
somewhat more slowly), it is to be expected that space will be reserved in multiplexes for
existing channels and creation of new channels. Even before the digital signal transmission
system becomes fully prepared, minority councils and minority associations will need to
request from relevant state bodies, as well as regulatory or broadcasting agencies that allocate
radio and television frequencies, to provide some incentives for founding radio and television
stations, such as free channels in the multiplex or special channels in multiplexes that belong
to public services, or even a privileged license fee for a certain number of years. As for the
radio range, which is still based on standard (analogous) frequencies, it is essential to request
new frequencies, or in case of an extremely overcrowded frequency spectrum, timesharing 18
for broadcasting program in the public media. Some solutions already exist in Serbia, as well
as proposals in BiH made by the Communications Regulatory Agency.
17 In Macedonia, during the frequency allocation process, cultural pluralism was one of the important goals.
From the very beginning of allocating analogous frequencies, the regulator made sure that minorities had access
and that private media were founded.
18 The timesharing concept existed in Macedonia, but it was not successful on the market and thus the regulator
allocated new frequencies. In BiH, political representatives of the Croat people (a constituent people) created a
concept of launching a Croat program on the public broadcasting service of BiH, but the proposal never entered
parliamentary and media (expert) procedure. Roma representatives have also insisted on such solutions.
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