RTS 1
RTS 1, the first public service channel, is the most watched television station in Serbia, as Nielsen data show. It is the successor to the former Radio Televizija Beograd, the first television station in the region, founded in 1958.
As stated on the RTS website, the channel's programming is aimed at "the widest audience with quality content, offering a selection of various popular genres of national importance, reflecting all social, cultural and national differences in the Republic".
In 2022, RTS 1 programmes were watched by an average of 2.6 million people per day. The most watched programmes on this channel are the central news programme Dnevnik 2, broadcasts of sports competitions and domestic film and series programmes, which compete for top ratings with the programmes of the leading commercial TV station Pink.
The Law on Public Media Services obliges RTS to create a programme that meets the public interest of Serbian citizens and the specific needs of national minorities. However, experts' assessments and citizens' impressions are that the quality of broadcasts is unsatisfactory, that news programmes are favourable to the ruling Serbian Progressive Party and that public service journalists systematically avoid controversial issues such as corruption or the rule of law.
Criticism of RTS, demands for a change of management and objective reporting are part of the "Serbia against Violence" protests that have been taking place in Belgrade and other Serbian cities since May 2023.
Independent media monitoring studies (e.g. BIRODI or CRTA) show that in certain segments of the news programme, RTS gave disproportionate attention to political actors or parties in power, while neglecting other relevant actors or the opposition. The bias in favour of the government is particularly visible during election campaigns, these studies show.
According to the latest financial report published by APR in 2022, RTS has more than 2,500 employees, with a total of 1,518 employees working in the programme, production and technical engineering units, whose task is to organise the production of content.
Despite this, RTS buys almost all the programmes for its most-watched channel, RTS 1, from privately owned production companies. At the beginning of 2023, the Pištaljka portal reported that the RTS board had come to the conclusion that the public broadcaster was paying private companies for the production of content, although it already had the technology and personnel to produce the programme itself. In particular, it stresses that RTS employees are also involved in certain projects of private companies and that this "enables a conflict of interest". The research was published with reference to the unpublished minutes of the ninth meeting of the Board of Directors from June 2022.
The Serbian government adopted amendments to the Law on Financing Public Media Services in October 2023, which allowed RTS and Radio-televizija Vojvodine to be partially financed from the budget until the end of 2024. As in the previous year, an amount of 900 million dinars (approximately 8,21 million USD) is earmarked for the financing of basic public service activities, and 20.3 million dinars (approximately 185,668 USD) for the financing of public service projects.
Audience Share
17.07%
Ownership Type
Public
Geographic Coverage
National
Content Type
Free Content (subscription for public media services is 299 RSD in 2023)
Media Companies / Groups
RTS
Ownership Structure
TV station RTS 1 is 100% owned by the Public Media Institution " Radio-televizija Srbije", whose formal founder is the Republic of Serbia.
Voting Rights
Missing Data
Individual Owner
General Information
Founding Year
1958
Affiliated Interests Founder
RTS and Radio - televizija Vojvodine (RTV) together form the system of public media institutions of Serbia.
Both are founded by the Republic of Serbia, as the public media service. Radio-televizija Srbije has around 2,500 employees working on four television channels, four radio stations and a portal. RTS is the successor of the oldest TV and radio channels in Serbia. Radio started broadcasting as Radio Belgrade in 1924, while the first TV station, TV Belgrade, started broadcasting in 1956. 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 programme 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 professional public usually criticises the elections of RTS leadership members due to the connection of certain members with the governing party.
Affiliated Interests Ceo
A long-time journalist and editor of RTS. In addition to being the acting director of television, Cerović is also the editor of the RTS educational and scientific program. He has been in the scientific editorial office of this television since 1991. He is the author and editor of more than 200 shows, interviews and series of scientific research, documentaries and popular science genres. He participated in the biggest international archaeological film festivals.
Affiliated Interests Editor-In-Chief
Acting chief editor of the news programme. He started his journalistic career in Večernje novosti, and then worked in the weekly Vreme. He is known for reporting from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. He was the only Yugoslav correspondent in East Berlin at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Stefanović was first elected to the position of acting editor-in-chief of the news program in 2004. In April 2023, RTS opened a public competition for the selection of a new news program editor, but not a single application was received for that position.
Chief editor of the cultural and artistic programme. He is the author of numerous novels and short stories ("Sadržaj šupljine“, „Poslednja šansa“, „Feliks“, „Top je bio vreo“, „Sibir“, „Osama" ("Contents of the Hollow", "Last Chance", "Felix", "The Cannon Was Hot", "Siberia", "Loneliness"). Kecmanović wrote "The Scar of Cain" (Kainov ožiljak) with Dejan Stojiljković and "Nemanjići", and with the historian Predrag Marković the book "Tito, afterword" (Tito, pogovor)). He is one of the authors of the scripts for the TV series “Senke nad Balkanom“ ("Shadows over the Balkans") and "Žigosani". Kecmanović's works have been adapted for film, television and theatre, and at one time he publicly criticized the film version of his novel "The Cannon Was Hot" directed by Slobodan Skerlić.
Sandra Perović
Acting chief editor of the educational programme. She is the editor of the family magazine "Sve boje života", which has been broadcast on RTS for years.
Affiliated Interests other important people
Director of BU TV programme
Director of BU Television Technical Engineering
Director of BU Production
Contact
Financial Information
Revenue (in Mill. $)
Missing Data
Operating Profit (in Mill. $)
Missing Data
Advertising (in % of total funding)
Missing Data
Market Share
Missing Data
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.
