Status quo in the Serbian media

At one point, there were over 280 local television stations in Serbia. This is a figure that could correspond to countries the size of Indonesia, Nigeria, and Egypt, which each have 50, 80, or 100 million inhabitants. Those 280 televisions reflected the total explosion of anarchy, piracy, and lawlessness in the country’s media system.

After the adoption of media laws in 2014 and the establishment of regulatory agencies, the number decreased. It is not clear how many, but in Serbia, there are still over 150 local TV stations. And they reflect the need for local information and local programming. For commercial reasons, large television, with so-called national frequencies, cannot satisfy this need.

The deep economic crisis and poverty, combined with the consequences of the disastrous privatization and de-industrialization of the interior of Serbia, put these small players in a very difficult position. As a result, the local audience is deprived of any high-quality locally generated program. The rather vague regulations on the mandatory privatization of local public services also add to this. Public information, at the local and regional level, is worse today than 15 or 25 years ago.

This complicated and sad situation is the result of the political will to put the free flow of information under control and allow local “tycoons” to have their private newsletters for hobby and entertainment. That is why it is not surprising that programs such as “My Cousin from the Village” and “Baba is Combing Her Hair…” are widely viewed because they are the only ones, in a narrative form, that reflects life, locally, as it is, in the era of harsh transition. Serbia, in such a transition, in which the audience did not ask anything, opted for cable television. The model of automatic cable subscription was imposed on the public, so today over seventy percent of the domestic audience watches TV programs via cable. This is a record in Europe. For example, in Italy, zero percent of the audience watches cable television. So, the digitization of terrestrial television broadcasting in Serbia, which had been prepared for a long time, failed. Why did all this happen just like that? The answer to that question can be provided by the following small case study.

In Serbia, United Media is the embodiment of a strategic merger of domestic and foreign capital. That union (appropriately named United media) was the first to take advantage of the liberalized and unregulated market of cable TV and internet services in Serbia. These benefits were opened precisely by the adoption of the so-called media laws in 2014. Through the unhindered and free use of the already existing (PTT) infrastructure, United media achieved serious market advantages. It was then that the competent authorities lifted the restrictions for the dominant player on the market. So, then, everything was ready for SBB, the cable arm of United Corporation, to become a dominant player on the market without anyone reacting to it. This was helped by the clumsily implemented digitization of television in Serbia, mentioned above, which drove over a million viewers from watching the program through a TV antenna to watching it through a subscription to cable television. Most of those viewers went to SBB.

Suddenly, SBB had over a million and a half subscribers to whom, without any regulation, it sold internet, television, and then telephone services, at prices it determined itself. It also generated an additional, large income by broadcasting a huge number of commercials, which, again despite legal restrictions, it broadcast at his own will. This gave it the opportunity to qualify a large part of its program offer as cross-border broadcasting. Those programs, illegally created or generated on the territory of Serbia, and not in Luxembourg, where they are officially registered, are filled, also illegally, with advertisements for the domestic market, in the local language. Profits for SBB have become huge. To the extent that, on one “cross-border” TV channel, without paying any taxes and fees, it earned more than 20 thousand Euros – per day, completely undisturbed.

It was only when the revenues of SBB, that is, United Media, began to be expressed in billions of euros that the state company Telecom woke up as a direct competitor. A brutal media war broke out between these two big companies, which everyone in Serbia has to follow. The regulatory body does not have the power to regulate everything, the race for advertising and subscription money is increasing spirally, programs are becoming more and more aggressive and vulgar, sensationalism and politicking dominate. This has been going on for ten years, eight of which were spent on the creation of a national media strategy, which has not even begun to be implemented yet. In the end, it got to the point that the abolition of REM, the supposedly independent regulatory agency for electronic media, is one of the main demands of the hundreds of thousands of people who are demonstrating these days, all over Serbia, in a frantic attempt to stop the violence that is unregulated and rampant, also spreads through television with the so-called national frequency.

Since disinformation is de facto legalized in Serbia, as in the whole world, and manipulation is ubiquitous, there is enormous confusion among the population. Disinformation and manipulations have gained the same status as truth and objective reporting. Almost nowhere can the veracity of some information be checked immediately, which makes it difficult for people to make the right decision at the right moment. Only in Serbia is propaganda spreading that claims that commercial media can and are independent. This propaganda produced a sharp division, and even conflicts, between supposedly independent and supposedly dependent media, which further confuses the public. Because, in the world, it is well known, it has always been considered normal that all media are classified and publicly announce whose point of view they represent or support.

The media depends on the one who finances them and the one who pressures them, where the biggest source of pressure is “economic leverage”. And it is precisely media workers, journalists in particular, who work in extremely difficult circumstances and are perhaps the most economically threatened profession in Serbia. Journalists, divided into two opposing associations, are insecure about their status, existence and career, a shadow of intimidation usually hangs over them, and that is why there is a large dose of self-censorship. And that’s how we came to the Serbian version of a permanent state, which is well known as – status quo.