Digital Age Presents Challenge For Montenegro Broadcaster

Marking 68 years since the first radio station started in Montenegro, the head of the public broadcaster, RTCG, says many challenges lie ahead, starting with digitalisation and financial stability.Speaking at the celebration on Tuesday in Podgorica, Rade Vojvodic, head of RTCG, addressed the many challenges facing the country’s oldest broadcaster.

These include digitalisation as well as the establishment of multimedia portal that would bring together radio, television, print and internet editions.

The day of Montenegro’s public broadcaster marks the day when the first radio station in the country, Radio Cetinje, began in 1944. Montenegrin public television officially started operations 20 years later.

Vojvodic expressed expectations that the new government, to be appointed next week, will support RTCG’s efforts to deliver public services in a financially sustainable manner by making an adequate regulatory framework.

He said that legal amendments and the 2012 budget revision had reduced significant sources of revenues.

Previously, Vojvodic warned that the RTCG might face bankruptcy if state institutions continued to pass new legislation in the field without consulting the broadcaster.

Before the October 2012 general election, he also criticised the provisions of the 2011 electoral law that obliged RTCG to provide free political marketing to political parties.

A survey by an NGO, the Centre for Democrarcy and Human Rights, whose results were presented on Monday, showed that public trust in RTCG was well below that of the private Vijesti television.

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