Republic of Serbia
Through the company Politika AD, the State of Serbia is the owner of 50% of the daily newspaper Politika, but also the publisher of numerous other media such as Ilustrovana Politika, Bazar, Politika zabavnik and Svet kompjutera.
The state of Serbia is also the founder of RTS.
The public media service of Radio-televizija Srbije is a company with around 2,500 employees who work on four television channels, four radio stations and a portal. Viewers all over the world can access the Planeta multimedia internet platform, through which they can watch all the programs produced by RTS. The music company PGP RTS, the music production department of RTS with a symphony orchestra, jazz band and children's choir Kolibri also operate as part of RTS. RTS has its own exhibition space, RTS Gallery, as well as the publishing activity of printing and publishing books. The research centre that monitors the viewership and audience of the RTS audience also operates within this institution.
The Law on Public Media Services, which regulates the management of RTS, was adopted in 2014. RTS, like RTV Vojvodina (PBS for the region of Vojvodina), has no formal owners, but is managed by a general manager and a nine-member Board of Directors. The program council with 15 members should function as an advisory body and represent the interests of the public. The Council of REM (Regulatory Body for Electronic Media) elects nine members of the board of directors for a period of five years after a public competition. The Board of Directors elects the General Manager and members of the Program Council on the proposal of the Parliamentary Committee for Culture and Information. The elections of RTS leadership members are usually criticized by the professional public, due to the connection of certain members with the governing party.
Further Information
Meta Data
RTS does not provide financial data for each media operating within its composition, but provides summary data for the entire business operation. Data from the Agency for Business Registers for the year 2022 show that the total business income of RTS was about 14 billion dinars (more precisely 14,063,932,000) and that this company operated with a loss of just over 38 million dinars.
Data from the 2021 financial statement, which RTS published on its website, show that the total income in that year was 13.6 billion dinars, and the bulk of this money (10.2 billion dinars) is the fee for public media services. Revenue from marketing and commercial activities amounted to 3 billion dinars in 2021.
There is little public information about the directors of RTS television and the managers of the business units that are part of the television, and this data mainly dates from the time of their election to their positions in 2015.
