PODGORICA, 13.02.2021. – World Radio Day is marked as a remembrance of February 13, 1946, when the UN Radio program was first broadcast. This year’s slogan is “New World – New Radio”.
Montenegro was a pioneer in broadcasting radio – telegraph signals in this part of Europe. From the hill Volujica near Bar, for the first time in the Balkans, a radio signal was broadcast. News and reports from the battlefield on November 27, 1944. year, announced Radio Cetinje, today’s Radio Montenegro.
Recent research by the NGO Center for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM), however, has shown that it is rarely consumed in Montenegro.
“48.3 percent of respondents stated that they never listen to the radio, 10.9 percent said they listen but rarely, while only one in five respondents listen to this media regularly.”
When it comes to dominant content on radio stations, a survey conducted by the Trade Union of Media of Montenegro in 2017 showed that in Montenegro, radio is increasingly perceived as entertainment, while the audience is most often determined by music. This is supported by the fact that radio stations that broadcast mainly music programs dominate. According to the data of the Agency for Electronic Media from March 2017, there were 36 commercial radio broadcasters in Montenegro, of which 4 did not have any informative content, while in others the information was short news. The rest of the talk boils down to commercials, sweepstakes, service information, and some trivia. On average, on a weekly basis, the program of commercial radio broadcasters makes up 77% of the music. Data from the same year show that local radio broadcasters broadcast approximately 7 hours of various speech content (informative, sports, cultural…) per day, while the rest of the program includes music.
The news program is the dominant feature of the Radio Public Service, namely the First Program of Radio Montenegro. Unlike the Second Channel, Radio 98, whose program is dominated by music, the First Channel broadcasts, according to data from the same year, 13.5 hours of various content (information, cultural and artistic, documentary, scientific-educational, sports, radio dramas…) .
Despite research showing that radio in Montenegro is rarely listened to, it seems that this media does not use the benefits of the Internet for its own media needs. So today we offer podcasts, on-demand services, and streams, which should be used for the right purposes, as many radio broadcasters in the world have successfully done.