07. 09. 2005

RTS-PINK WAR TO BEGIN?

BEOGRAD, September 7, 2005 - RTS Editor-in-Chief Aleksandar Tijanic and the owner of TV pink Zeljko Mitrovic have exchanged some harsh words. First off, Tijanic told "Kurir" daily newspaper that TV Pink was not media, but a weapon of mass destruction of the Serbs. Responding to the announcement that by the end of September TV Pink plans to start brand new news programme called "National daily news", starting at 7.30 p.m. at the exact time when RTS's daily News programme (Dnevnik) is broadcast, Tijanic said that Pink's programme would be a sitcom, and that TV Pink was a Mongoloid offspring of both Milosevic and DOS era that cherished hate speech. On last night's show on his own television, Mitrovic said he was not afraid of Tijanic and that he must resists his monopoly on arrogance, brutality and primitivism. Other guests on TV show called Trap (Zamka), apart from Mitrovic, were the Serbian Minister of Culture Dragan Kojadinovic, Manager of Strategic Marketing Agency Srdjan Bogosavljevic and Editor-in-chief of "Evropa" weekly magazine Zeljko Cvijanovic. Mitrovic accused Tijanic of catastrophic management of the Serbian Broadcasting Service and tried illustrating the point with the figures referring to advertisements broadcast on RTS. Kojadinovic intervened by saying that he should not do that, because Tijanic was not present on the show. Commenting on the "National daily news" programme, he said that it was a legitimate editorial and marketing concept that, unlike robotised news programmes of other TV stations, would be very characteristic and recognisable. "It is known that I don't have an impeccable resume, but I've disembarked on a new civilisation road", added Mitrovic saying that he and Tijanic were old buddies from the same political party and that at that time you could not get to Mira Markovic because of him. Mitrovic said that both as a citizen and as an interested party, he feared the transformation of RTS into a public service, because this directly affected the working atmosphere of other TV stations. Bogosavljevic, Cvijanovic and Kojadinovic tried to divert the discussion to some other subjects on several occasions so that they would not remain pure scenery on that TV show. It remains to be seen whether this clash between Tijanic and Mitrovic and mutual accusations would bring higher ratings of news programmes at 7.30 p.m. on their respective TV stations.