By: Ekrem Dupanović, [email protected]
I doubt I will go back to watch the program of BHT1 any time soon, or that I will follow whether the signal of this public service will shut down on 30 June. Maybe after what they did today they actually shouldn’t exist. For two hours I watched the debate at the House of Representatives of the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina, about the Law on Public Broadcasting System of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which should resolve the issue of sustainable financing of the said public broadcasters. I put all my work aside. I sat in front of the television and stared at it, trying to understand how come some delegates, including the Vice-Chair Borjana Krišto, publicly, in front of TV cameras, boast that they don’t pay the subscription fees. Payment of subscription is mandatory, and a Parliament is the highest legislative body of any country. Vice-Chair of the Parliament doesn’t respect the law for which she voted. I don’t get it. I’m obviously too dense for this. And then, at the crucial moment, the most amazing thing happened – a feeble female voice is heard – a reporter from the hall, who says that the discussion is in progress and that it’s not at all certain whether a final solution for the public broadcasting system will be reached. “Dear viewers, if you are interested in how this matter regarding the law will roll out, you can go to our website and follow the events there, as we return to our regular program.” Cue the intro to a Greek soap opera Love and wine. I started to laugh so much that I thought I lost my marbles. I pinched myself, realized everything was OK, and went back to my work, lamenting over the two hours that I spent in front of the TV.
Actually, the public broadcasting system is under attack from all sides. One front is within, assaulted by the incompetent and non-creative people in almost all positions. The program is disastrous and you can see that money is not the problem, but programming ideas. Realistically, the best shows are the ones that are made in foreign production, through the obligation of public television that part of the programming must be implemented in cooperation with independent production companies. Since some of these foreign producers are my friends, I know how it goes. Television doesn’t pay them in cash, but in advertising real estate, which they can’t use because public broadcasters are limited to five minutes of commercials per hour, and these minutes, in prime time, are filled by the TV station itself. One of the producers has so far accumulated over ten thousand minutes (he accumulated them over years, by airing a weekly documentary), and he will never be able to sell those minutes to anyone. He was counting on advertising and media agencies, but they have contracts with TV stations where they get air time under enormous rebates, and when the owner of the production company signed the contract, he signed it with prices according to the price list. “Man, how I f…. myself”.
The fact that public services are strictly limited in terms of number of minutes of advertising, which is at the same time limitless in commercial broadcasters, leads the commercial TV stations in a position where they can offer their ad space for next to nothing and still live well from advertising. One time I followed some of the series, whether I wanted to or not, because my wife used to watch them. One of the most watched commercial TV stations broadcasted three shows every evening, and in each of them three blocks of commercials, and in each block, among others, three ads from the same advertiser, at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the block. You do the math. It turns out that one advertiser, every night, paid 27 airings, over 365 days, which means 9855 airings. If they had paid 20 euros per airing (not per second mind you, per airing) it would be 200,000 euros a year at a single commercial TV station.
Disordered relations in the media market affect all participants. In a country where there is no law about advertising anyone can do what they want and how they want. But it seems that the country doesn’t care. Regardless of how small market Bosnia and Herzegovina is, there is still some money in circulation in the media business. If there were rules, there would surely be more of it. The least interested in introduction of rules are agencies and media, who suffer the most from the lack thereof. They just need to understand it.
Sarajevo, 15 June 2016.
