Media Landscape of Serbia: Analysis of National Television Content
Despite frequent changes to the regulatory framework and the declarative increase in programming obligations for broadcasters over the past decade, the quality and diversity of television content in Serbia have not improved, which is one of the key conclusions of the analysis “The Media Landscape of Serbia: Analysis of National Television Content” published by the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation.
Through several weeks of monitoring the program and a critical discursive analysis of selected broadcasts, this analysis examines to what extent commercial television stations with national licenses have fulfilled the obligations undertaken in their programming documents, as well as how these programming practices affect the public interest.
Television continues to be the dominant source of information in Serbia, and the media landscape is highly centralized: four commercial broadcasters with national licenses (TV Pink, TV Happy, TV Prva, and TV B92), together with RTS, absorb about 70% of the total audience. The latest available report from REM on compliance with programming obligations was published in 2021 and shows a series of serious violations of the Minimum Programming Requirements by national licensed television stations, which REM did not take into account when granting new licenses a year later.
As the analysis shows, the removal of the quantitative obligation for broadcasters to ensure that at least one-fifth of their programming consists of cultural-artistic, scientific-educational, documentary, and children’s content, along with the introduction of the vague criterion of “diversity,” has opened the door for further commercialization of programming schemes. At the same time, the prolonged absence of effective oversight by REM, especially since November 2024, when the mandate of the previous REM Council expired, has contributed to serious violations of legal and programming obligations going unpunished, allowing the dominance of reality formats, infotainment, and politically instrumentalized content.
Monitoring has confirmed that so-called quality programs are often only symbolically present or completely absent, despite the programming documents of the four national television stations promising at least 20% quality programming as part of their broadcasting licenses. Although these broadcasters emphasize their commitment to culture, education, pluralism, and the public interest in their documents, programming practices indicate a deeply rooted disproportion between declarative obligations and actual content. Consequently, public trust in the regulatory system is declining, while the television landscape increasingly shifts towards a model where the public interest is subordinated to political and commercial priorities.
Discursive Patterns of National Television Stations
Discursive analysis of the content of informative-political programs on TV Prva, TV Pink, TV Happy, and TV B92 shows the existence of a consistent and systematically maintained propaganda pattern in which reality is constructed through a binary narrative: on one side, the government is portrayed as the only legitimate guardian of order, stability, and national identity, while on the other side, the opposition, students, universities, civic initiatives, and non-governmental organizations are represented as coordinated actors destabilizing the state, often associated with external factors, foreign services, or “anti-Serbian” interests.
Through strategies of delegitimization, moral panic, psychologization of political dissent, rhetoric of betrayal, and the use of pathological labels, these programs systematically dehumanize critical voices, strip citizens of political autonomy, demonize academic institutions, and normalize repression as a desirable response to the “threat.”
This discourse functions as an ideological apparatus that disciplines rather than informs: it closes the public space for democratic debate, produces an atmosphere of fear, suppresses social pluralism, and solidifies an autocratic framework in which any criticism of the government is presented as an attack on the state.
The findings of the analysis raise serious questions about the work of the regulator, the legality of granted national licenses, and the sustainability of the current television market from the perspective of the public interest.
The author of the analysis is Nikola Jović.
You can download the complete analysis HERE.
