©Media Online 2001. All rights reserved.

A New Radio for New Times

Zoran Udovicic

All of last Sunday of May 6 I listened to farewell speeches on Radio BiH made by dozens of journalists, editors and other radio workers who were saying good-bye to their broadcasts and the radio’s overall program, which stopped broadcasting the next day and gave its place to Radio Federation Bosnia-Herzegovina. Well known voices were heard one after another, voices we had listened to for years, in broadcasts whose openings were so recognizable that they make the history of radio culture in this region… The program hosts were supported by listeners and everyone was melancholic, lamenting for something that is “disappearing,” being “abolished.”

            I myself spent more than 20 years at this radio station and experienced at least two major program transformations, which always provoked some tumult, some emotion, even disbelief that the new will be better than the old. My experience is that from any transformation a new quality has always arisen, a feeling for new times in which to write and speak. Each one of these changes was also a chance for a new generation of people who courageously went on air.

            That is why I understand and at the same time do not understand this turmoil of emotion and protest that I heard on Sunday and lately in general, when a radio station with a tradition almost half a century long was ceasing to operate and two new ones were surfacing from it – BH Radio 1, which will cover all of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Radio Federation BiH, which will broadcast in one of the two entities in this country. I understand that any journalist sees a broadcast that he or she has been working on for a long time as a child and finds it hard to say good-bye to it. I also understand the general feeling of loyalty, of belonging to a tradition, in which we older journalists were brought up. But I am confused by the fact that radio workers also feel that the appearance of two new radios, in conformity with the spirit and needs of the present times, ends the tradition of the former radio.

                Reasons for this controversy, over-sensitiveness and even misunderstanding can be sought in the high politicization of the entire transformation process of the state-owned radio and television into a public broadcaster. First former Radio Television Bosnia-Herzegovina, the same as the Republika Srpska broadcaster, was left to the mercy of nationalists and architects of war. And when the international community realized it could not ensure democratization of these media in collaboration with the nationalists in power, it turned its attention to international projects – OBN and FERN – while radio and television in Sarajevo and Banja Luka were left to languish in problems and apathy. Then the international community’s High Representative to Bosnia-Herzegovina initiated a transformation process in 1998, but it unfolded with catastrophic lethargy and wandering thanks to political obstruction, passiveness and misunderstanding on the part of journalists and disorientation on the part of international officials in charge of implementing transformation.

            Finally, on May 7 the radio project moved from deadlock – services commenced operating for the whole of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Federation, while the start of transformed television is still awaited. Judging by enthusiastic behavior at the two new radio programs over the past days, the apathy that had long ruled Radio Television BiH seems to be smashed. Professionals will probably succeed in rising above political obstacles that had prevented them from offering their journalistic services to a new time, so burdened with great challenges.

            Therefore, I would like to extend my congratulations to people who have taken new projects upon themselves and my thanks to generations who had been building the history of Bosnian-Herzegovinian broadcasting for 56 years.

Zoran Udovicic is editor in chief of Media Online and president of Media Plan Institute. Translation by: K.H. ©Media Online 2001. All rights reserved.

go to top

P.O. Box, CH-8031 Zürich, Switzerland
Phone +41-1-272 46 37,  Fax +41-1-272 46 82, email: info@MEDIENHILFE.ch