Bosnia's Public Broadcasting Stares Doom in Face

Bosnia's broadcasting sector has experienced many obstacles over a decade or more. Some are common to the media industry in general in the country, but others are specific and relate to this sector alone, which is oversaturated, complex and poor.

The situation is especially problematic with the public broadcasting service.

Its transformation in line with European public broadcasting models started in early 2000s, but is not complete. Unfortunately, it is unlikely ever to be completed.

Under laws adopted from 2005 to 2008, Bosnia's public service broadcasting system comprises three broadcasters: BHRT, which is a country-wide service; two entity public broadcasters, Radio-Televizija Federacije BiH (RTFBiH) for the Federation entity and Radio-Televizija Republike Srpske (RTRS), for the Republika Srpska.

To complete the system, the remaining precondition was the creation of the PBS Corporation as the fourth legal subject.

The PBS Corporation's main task was to create a robust structure, harmonising cooperation among the three public broadcasters, which, however, remains missing.

From the start, the three public broadcasters have behaved as bitter rivals, not as complementary components of an inclusive system.

Meanwhile, other issues have emerged, such as quarrels over advertising revenues.

Internal disagreement relates to within the PBS itself. Article 23 of the law on public broadcasting, (Official Gazette of BiH, No. 78/05), prescribes the distribution of revenues derived from both subscription fees and marketing following a 50: 25: 25 percentage scheme.

The 50 per cent goes to the BHRT, as this was projected to play a key social cohesion role in a country still deeply divided on ethnic lines.

From the start, RTFBiH opposed this share-out, insisting that advertising money should go to whichever media outlet had gained the money. An additional argument was that this public broadcaster was the country's most watched TV station.

It should be noted that an informal agreement has since been reached between the public broadcasters, exempting advertising revenues from the distribution scheme until the PBS Corporation has been created.

However, apart from this internal issue, a broader problem is that the public broadcasters have been losing their lead positions in the market for years.

While their market share declines, commercial networks are rapidly expanding, particularly TV Pink BiH, a sister outlet of Belgrade-based TV Pink, which majors on reality shows.

Besides this, two public broadcasters from neighbouring Serbia and Croatia, RTS and HRT, can be seen in most of Bosnia via cable and satellite or through cross-border spill-over.

Needless to say, they are also draining away much advertising revenues away from both public and commercial broadcasters in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

From time to time, representatives of commercial broadcasters in Bosnia have asked whether it is right that public broadcasters, in addition to earning revenue from subscription fees, should earn money from airing commercials as well.

Their complaint might be worth considering if the subscription fee were sufficient, but it is not. It is lowest in the region, not to mention in the rest of Europe.

The subcscription fee is a compulsory tax, prescribed by law, for possession of radio or TV sets. This is an European invention aimed solely at financing the public broadcasting sector.

According to some estimates, the TV advertising market in Bosnia is worth about 50,000 euros a year.

Another issue is that of the «dumping» pricing policy, mostly applied by public broadcasters. Prices for airing commercials on public broadcasters are up to 70 per cent lower than those on private TV stations.

Public broadcasters also do not stick to the advertising time limits laid down by Communications Regulatory Agency, RAK.

These stipulate that the total amount of advertising time should not exceed 15 per cent of daily transmission time, or more than 20 per cent per clock hour, which means no more than 12 minutes of commercials per hour.

Public broadcasters are also not supposed to exceed a limit of six minutes of commercial breaks per hour.

However, they can decide whether to base the calculation on a natural clock hour, or on an overlapping clock hour. This option offers leeway for improper use of the advertising time limits, in particular during prime time from 5.30pm to 10.30pm, when the largest audience is available.

A dozen or so of monitors who have worked ad hoc and independently (including myself) have noticed that public broadcasters routinely exceed the prescribed quotas. But, so far, the RAK has not fined them for breaching the set limits.

The credibility of audience measurement has also emerged an issue. Who is actually watching programmes is a question that has flummoxed broadcasters since the invention of television.   

If put in the context of viewing habits, which are no longer exclusively tied to TV programmes but to ever expanding audiences of online video, the confusion over measurements seems complete.

The country-wide BHT TV channel, which is an integral part of BHRT, has never managed to attract a wide audience. Average audience share is about 5 per cent.

The quality of its programmes may be less to blame for this than its status and concept as - as mentioned above - a factor playing a socially cohesive role in a fragile, divided society.

Recently, another troublesome issue has emerged: collection of subscription fees, which dramatically dropped in first three months of this year.

Around 60,000 subscribers simply disapppeared in early 2011, or 23 per cent, compared with the previous year, the governing board of PBS BiH announced.

To recall, the subscription, or license, fee is basically a tax or compulsory payment for the possession of a radio or TV set, and has nothing to do with whether programmes are listened to or watched. This subscription bill is by law attached to the user's fixed phone line bill.

From the beginning, collection of this money has encountered difficulties, in particular in Croat-majority cantons in the Federation entity where the local authorities have sometimes even advised people not to pay their fees.

If a telephone subscriber fails to pay the bill, a warning notice is sent ordering payment - but without the subscription fee. Telecom operators simply are not willing to lose income because of the subscription fee.

This practice of not paying the subscription fee can be partly explained in the context of the constant demands of Bosnian Croat politicians for a separate Croatian TV channel.

Currently less than 5 per cent of the population in the mostly Croatian region of Western Herzegovina pay the subscription fee.

Another, more important, explanation is that people now overwhelmingly rely on mobile phones, and are almost en masse cancelling fixed phone line services.

Fixed telephone penetration in Bosnia and Herzegovina used to be around 95 per cent, which was the main argument for attaching the subscription or license fee to telephone bills.  

Obviously, this system of collection of subscription fees has to be changed urgently, or the public broadcasting service will collapse.

This in turn would be detrimental for Bosnia's fragile society, bearing in mind that the public broadcasting service was designed to play a crucial socio-cultural and political cohesion role by fostering a spirit of tolerance and pluralism.

Unfortunately, the unfriendly atmosphere between the three public broadcasters, which barely communicate with each other, suggests that the future creation of the long-awaited PBS Corporation is more unlikely than ever.

The political will is simply lacking to complete its creation, symbolizing that post-Dayton Bosnia can be workable.

Part of the responsibility for this rests with the international community, which invested a lot of money, time and energy on transforming the media in Bosnia so that it could meet European standards.

In spite of this, the completion of the public broadcasting service remains incomplete even though the establishment of such a body is a precondition for Bosnia obtaining EU candidate status.

Dusan Babic is a media and political analyst in Sarajevo. This article is funded under the BICCED project, supported by the Swiss Cultural Programme.