RTV 1
The first channel of Radio Television Vojvodina (RTV) spans news, cultural, entertainment programming, as well as programs for children and the young, with the focus on developments in Serbia’s northern province.
RTV is the successor to Radio-television Novi Sad, which was established as a subunit of Radio-television Beograd (RTB) and founded in 1971.
According to the Law on the Public Broadcasting Services, RTV has an obligation to produce programming in the public interest, yet monitoring of the news program content carried out in July 2018 showed a different picture. Half of the content of the “Dnevnik u 5” [News at 5] and “Vojvodjanski Dnevnik” [Vojvodina Evening News] was made up of pseudo-events, among which the most frequent (a third) were those organized by the government, while others were organized by private companies and other organizations, according to the findings of the two-month monitoring of programming carried out by the Slavko Curuvija Foundation and the Podrzi RTV movement.
RTV 1 underwent significant program changes during the last few years. However, 2016 was a grave year for this media house, when most editors and a large number of journalists were fired under unclear circumstances, while many programs such as the investigative Radar were abolished.
Recently, the Belgrade correspondent of RTV, Zana Bulajic, was also left without work. After she went live on the RTV Evening news and stated that the public had still not been informed of the details of the Nikola Tesla Airport concession agreement in February 2018, RTV ceased to engage her services.
Audience Share
0.42%
Ownership Type
Public
Geographic Coverage
Regional
Content Type
Free (subscription fee 220 RSD)
Media Companies / Groups
PBS RTV
Ownership Structure
Managing structure of RTV is the same as RTS and it includes nine members of the Managing Council and General Director, while the fifteen members of the Program Council shape the program content. The Council of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) selects nine members of the Managing Council for a period of five years following a public selection process. The Managing Council appoints the General Director and members of the Program Council on the recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee for Culture and Information.
Group / Individual Owner
Autonomous Province of Vojvodina
General Information
Founding Year
1972
Founder
Missing Data
Ceo
Miodrag Koprivica
Affiliated Interests Ceo
Formerly a member of JUL, the political party led by Mira Markovic, the late wife of Slobodan Milosevic. From 1989 to 1991 he was the general director of Radio-television Novi Sad.
Editor-In-Chief
Nenad Cacic
Affiliated Interests Editor-In-Chief
Came to RTV from the news agency TANJUG during 2017, where he worked as a journalist. Shortly before the RTV Managing Council appointed him as editor, Cacic was engaged as assistant to the editor of the news programs of RTV. According to the reporting of the VOICE website, this position had, until then, not existed on RTV. The journalists of the same website had to wait for a year to receive Cacic’s biography, while representatives of journalists’ associations and trade unions deemed his experience inadequate for the position to which he was appointed. Although he claims to have studied at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, it seems questionable whether he ever completed his studies there. In his biography, he claims that during 2016 he graduated from the Faculty of Economy and Engineering Management, as well as that he has been in journalism for more than 20 years. He has received the Oktobarska Nagrada of Novi Sad for 2016 which, aside from him, was presented to the Music Youth Association and Association of Pensioners of Novi Sad.
Other Important People
Slobodan Arezina was the RTV Program Director until April 2016, when the Managing Council removed him from this post on the grounds that he had neglected his duties and was responsible for a decline in the viewership of the TV station. Arezina challenged the decision of RTV through the courts, with the process lasting more than two years. Even after this, he was still not reinstated to the position of Program Director, despite two court rulings in his favor. The first-instance verdict through which the court ordered RTV to return Arezina to his previous job was handed down after a year, in April 2017. The Basic Court in Novi Sad confirmed that the removal of Arezina was unlawful and that the explanation given by the management was based on falsehoods.
At the same time as the first-instance verdict was handed down, the Managing Council of RTV named Sonja Kokotovic Zecevic as the new Program Director at RTV.
However, the verdict from April 2017 would not become final until it was confirmed by the Appeals Court in Novi Sad in December of the same year. After this, the management of RTV returned Arezina to the position of Program Director, yet failed to relieve Sonja Kokotovic Zecevic from the same job. In this way, RTV had two Program Directors by January 2018. After this, Arezina was declared redundant on 24th January 2018 and relieved of his duties as Program Director on 29th January 2018.
The case would once again end up in court, with the Appeals Court in Novi Sad once again confirming that Arezina should be reinstated as Program Director. However, Arezina resigned from this position at the end of December 2018. Despite the court decision to return him to his job, Arezina gave up his struggle, but remained in the post of manager of development projects in the cabinet of the General Director of RTV. He has been in this post since being dismissed in April 2016.
Contact
Ignjata Pavlasa 3, 21 000 Novi Sad
Telephone: +381 21 210 14 20
E-mail: kabinet@rtv.rs,
Website: www.rtv.rs
Financial Information
Revenue (in Mill. $)
Missing Data
Operating Profit (in Mill. $)
Missing Data
Advertising (in % of total funding)
Missing Data
Market Share
Missing Data
Further Information
Meta Data
Nenad Djuretić and Branko Bjelic were chosen to the membership of the Managing Council of RTV during 2017.
Subscription – Funds gathered on the territory of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina will be divided so that 70% goes to RTV and 30% to RTS. It is interesting to note that the way in which the funds from the television subscription are allocated was an equally important question in the 1970s as it is today. In the period 1970-1973, while the building of RTV was being built, RTV received anywhere between 50% and 90% of the subscription fee, which was charged for each receiver.
Through the amendments to the Law on the Temporary Determination of the Manner of Charging the Tax for the Public Media Service which the Serbian Parliament adopted towards the end of 2018, the amount of the subscription fee was increased to 220 dinars from the former 150. This measure has been in force since 1 January 2019.
