PODGORICA, 28.10.2018. – The intention of the local municipality in Berane to open local television is recently formalized by the Proposal of the decision on the establishment of a local public broadcaster Radio Television of Berane. The Proposal is set to be on a daily agenda of local parliament session already on Monday, November 6th.
The local public broadcaster Radio Berane currently operates in that city, and if the councilors give a green light to the proposal of the municipality’s leadership, Berane will have television for the first time.
The proposal for the decision on the establishment of a local public broadcaster Radio Television Berane also provides for mandatory financing by the municipality, which will be further specified by signing the contract with the new management of that media.
However, most employees and local radio management are not very enthusiastic about this idea. During a recent visit of representatives of the Trade Union of Media of Montenegro, they said that they are not against the further development and strengthening of their media, but they fear for the survival and wondering how the municipality will be able to finance television, which is a much more expensive media, if it can not stabilize the radio for years. Employees of Radio Berane didn’t received seven payments.
They also offer another solution from the local media: instead of opening the television, they propose further strengthening of the Radio Berane web portal, which proved to be a full hit and already recorded a significant number of visits. With much smaller investments in the portal, it would also provide a significant amount of video content that would be much more cost effective than opening television and would have a similar effect for informing citizens.
It is especially problematic that the employees in the radio and the management are completely uninformed about what is being prepared.
However, it is not the first time that local municipality employees in the local public broadcaster aren’t informed about the announced opening of the television. In a similar situation, employees of Radio Herceg Novi, where the establishment of Radio Television Herceg Novi is planned, are also uninformed.
The situation in local public broadcasters for years is very bad, almost all of them have financial problems, and only few of them regularly pay salaries to employees.