TV Frequencies Karic - Yugo Berlusconi

According to an anecdote about Bogoljub Karic, the head of Serbia's major private company Braca Karic, he entered the media business by asking how high is the Politika building. After he was told that the building has 18 storeys, Karic said: "My publishing house will have 19."

The Karic brothers "built" the first storey of their media empire by buying Politika's weekly Intervju and their intention to expand was given a strong incentive by the results of the Serbian government's competition for radio and television frequencies. The firm BK Telkom - one of many owned by the Karic brothers - won the only officially available frequency in Belgrade (channel 12) and channel 46 in Novi Sad.

Among the stations which failed in the competition for channel 12 is Radio B 92. The station's Editor-in-Chief Veran Matic told Vreme: "This decision is understandable if you know that the government has turned down two other radio stations from the association of independent electronic media (Radio Smederevo and Bum 93 of Pozarevac). We'll continue to work, but we won't give up television. We've been broadcasting our radio program for five years without a proper permission, so we can do the same with television."

No other comments are available at the moment, since the results of the competition have been released unofficially. But the whole job was done without much publicity and in a hurry as one of the last moves by the outgoing government.

Prime Minister-Designate Mirko Marjanovic said in his expose before the Serbian Parliament his cabinet would make some changes in the information department (for the better, if we understood well). If those words are really translated into reality, it would mean changed conditions of the frequency competition.

The currently valid conditions cannot satisfy most of the competitors for a very simple reason - all international conventions describe the frequencies as a "natural resource" which cannot be controlled by the state. But in Serbia, the federal law on public information (Article 6) says the authority over the frequencies rests with the "Republic of Serbia" which acts upon the "recommendation" of its competent bodies.

The vicious circle becomes complete with the required "recommendation" by the Serbian television, which only a few can hope to get. On the other hand, people versed in the media affairs claim that Serbia has enough frequencies for all interested stations that can fulfill technical conditions.