Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović, ekrem@www.media-marketing.com
I hear news on the radio that the book Radio Sarajevo, published by Media Center, was declared a publishing project of the year at the Spring Book Fair that just ended. Among the memories of authors published in the book are my own as well. I wrote ten pages of the book, which has over 600 pages.
Radio Sarajevo first sounded on 10 April, 1945, four days after the liberation of Sarajevo. It stopped broadcasting under that name just after the beginning of the last war. In May 1992, Radio Sarajevo changed its name, and has since bore the name Radio Bosne i Hercegovine (Radio of Bosnia and Herzegovina). We know that the name change is not just a formality, but one of the strategically most important things that reflect changes in an organization. That was the case with Radio Sarajevo. Nothing was and will never be the same after that. That’s why there was a need to write a book that will bear witness to the 47 golden years of Radio Sarajevo. I’m proud of my fifteen years of work at Radio Sarajevo. I came to love radio as a medium. It’s still my favorite even today. Although it can’t broadcast image, radio is still the most visual medium, because all the time while it talks to you, you visualize in your mind that which you are listening. That’s why you pay attention to what is said on the radio. With television, the image distracts you, you remember more what you’ve seen, and less what you’ve heard.
If there’s any justice, I’ll end up in some small, private internet radio of my own.
I worked at Radio Sarajevo from 1970 to 1985. Those were the most beautiful 15 years of my life. There I met my best friends: Mirko Kamenjašević, Jovo Jovanović, Rade Trbojević, Suad Hadžiomerović, my dear Bojana Pandžić … I made friends with the entire radio community in Yugoslavia, I married Vedrana, got my daughter Asja, bought an apartment at a time when everyone else had to wait to get one, Vedrana opened a beauty salon, I flew around the entire globe…. Well, now it turns out that all the most important things in my life, apart from the birth of my son Filip, happened to me while I was working on the radio. But, that’s how it is.
Radio survived the emergence of television, adapted to the Internet, which enabled even the small private radio programs to become globally available, but I highly doubt it will survive today’s media agencies. They’re not interested in it because it’s a medium with low advertising prices, but also because, if they were doing a national campaign, they’d have to include at least a dozen radio stations. Who would research that, make media-plan for an agency commission which is less than that obtained by broadcasting three TV spots? Who’d bother? “It’s not worth it.” But radio is partly to blame as well. It lacks creativity in its approach to marketing, in attracting agencies and advertisers. On the other hand, advertising agencies don’t have good copywriting for radio ads, or directors who would properly wrap it. In most national and major international festivals of creativity in advertising, the main prize in the category of radio is generally not awarded because the entries don’t deserve them. Pity!
Today we publish a column on ad blocking on the Internet. Telecom operators have begun racketeering the internet media, demanding part of the proceeds or they will indiscriminately block all ads. It started in the Caribbean countries, but it’s Internet we’re talking about, it will spread like a plague very quickly to the whole world.
Shine Technologies, backed prominently by Horizons Ventures and based in Israel, offers ad-blocking technology that allows companies to block ads at the network level. And last September, Jamaica-based mobile carrier Digicel announced that it would begin to implement Shine’s technology on its network, blocking ads across all mobile display, apps and mobile video. Although there is an opt-out mechanism, by using Shine, Digicel is indiscriminately blocking ads for all customers by default, without offering a real choice or any transparency into their actions. Exactly how Shine determines what consumers can and cannot see is not available for consumers to understand.
The ultimate hypocrisy? After framing all of this as favorable to consumers, Digicel has approached major media companies for revenue-sharing agreements. In Digicel’s vision of the future, the network will resemble a pay-to-play toll booth, charging consumers and publishers for access to each other.
For a long time now I simply can’t understand people who install ad-blockers, and want to listen to free music, watch free video and read free portals. There’s an old saying in our parts: “It’s not free even with an old hag.” (Equivalent in meaning to “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”.) What will the media, which you want to consume free of charge, live from if you block their couple of seconds of ads?
We got mail from Budapest. We have become the official partners of the World Communications Forum in Davos for the Adriatic region.
Young artists are getting their first friends on the Art&Business portal, which we also publish. BeoExpo from Belgrade and Sarajevo agency Via Media have paid a thousand euros each for our program to support the development of young artists – Friends of Young Artists. Do you want to join this program? With us are 33,000 Rotary clubs around the world who will lobby for our young artists. Why don’t you join as well? Right now you have the opportunity to be among the first to become part of the success of a large project that will enrich the regional culture and art.
Today, agency Homepage confirmed for us a small but sweet campaign for the hotel Galleria in Subotica as an example of good practice in the use of the Internet in general, with a focus on communication on social networks in the hotel industry. Thank you Miloje Sekulić (Homepage) and Branimir Cigale (Hotel Galleria).
Have a good and very successful day.
Sarajevo, 27 April, 2016.