Media: The Tamed Studio B

by Milan Milosevic

The independent Studio B television station is no longer independent as of Thursday, 15 February. The city council urgently took notice of and adopted the decision made by the Supreme court to nullify the privatization of Studio B which took place six years ago. A new leadership, comprising mainly socialist clerks at city level, was appointed in no time. The old one (Dragan Kojadinovic - chairman of the executive board, Milorad Roganovic - director and editor-in-chief) looked pretty jaded and dejected, while Studio B's young crew decided to drive the new boss mad by announcing in the prime time news bulletin that the good old station is gone, without asking him for permission.

City officials said the programme would remain unchanged and promised to

pour money into the new project, while the new boss - editor of the recently

banned and in no time reinstated SOS sports channel, Dragisa Kovacevic, made a vow to put the opposition on air provided it behaved itself.

Opposition leaders - the likes of Vuk Draskovic, Zoran Djindjic, Vojsilav Seselj, Vojislav Kostunica and Vesna Pesic lodged a vehement verbal protest saying the takeover wouldn't last and that those who staged it would live to regret it. End of story.

The Studio B affair has mounted more tension ahead of the fifth anniversary of March 9 rally, and its takeover by the regime sends a message reading loud and clear that the "March 9 uprising for freedom" has suffered yet another defeat. During the March 9 rally in 1991, the police broke into the NTV Studio B television and banned all broadcasts. The rally went on into the next day with students screaming "We want the truth" and "Long live Studio B". The ruling socialist always resented losing their grip over the station and the media in general.

At that time, power cuts were a daily reality and the Serbian parliament announced a debate on the proposal to ban live coverage of its sessions. The federal government took control of the independent daily Borba, while the city council was doing its best to engulf the independent Studio B television. Shortly before the takeover, there was a bitter argument on the SOS sports programme broadcast by Studio B. The executive board discussed the possibility of merger with the "BK Telecom - Vecernje Novosti" holding comapny. The weakened Studio B was easy prey. Semi-qualified reporters, quite numerous in Studio B, had no objections to posing in front of state cameras instead of independent ones. Jelena Kosanic, the last editor of the cult programme "Impression of the week", said there were such reporters and

expressed the hope that viewers will notice that the old Studio B is gone.

The opposition announced early last year that it will defend the Studio B television with mass rallies, but it was no loneger capable of taking any concreted action. The radicals and the rest of the opposition did have a common denominator for defending the media - a desire to do so, but no strenghth to take effctive action in that respect. Last year's political battles were marked with the radicals' attempts to exert non-parliament pressure by staging a number of rallies throughout Serbia, but to no avail.

The state-owned media spent the whole year campaigning against the radicals, calling them the advocators of war and putting two democratic parties led by Djindic and Kostunica in the same rank. At the same time, they promoted a new pro-communist bloc led by Mirjana Markovic, the wife of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. After the signing of the Dayton accord, the socialists and the neo-communists usurped all the media available, having squeezed out even Vuk Draskovic.

The sweet-talking authorities are now more open than ever in their quests to conquer all there is to be conquered. The case of Studio B shows that they need not fear any serious resistance.