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Encouraging Signals

With the opening of the TV studio in Zvecan, the RTV Serbia becomes the first state institution to return to Kosovo

by S. DJURDJEVIC-LUKIC

NIN, Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia, January 18, 2001

While the families of the missing from Kosovo and Metohija are in vain protesting and disconcerting news about the mobilization of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB) are arriving from Presevo, the opening of the TV studio in Zvecan is bringing new hope to the Serbs living in the north of Kosovo. That will allowed only the continuous flow of information about the problems faced by the local population, but the RTV Serbia becomes the first institution of the Republic of Serbia to return to the soil of the southern province. Not with 800 employees and programming in Romani, Turkish and even Greek, but with a lot of good will from Belgrade, UNMiK and the people who will work in Zvecan.

The studio of RTV Serbia in this old Kosovo town was ceremoniously opened on Tuesday when a slot for the main daily news program was personally edited in the studio in Zvecan by the acting director of RTVS Nenad Ristic. The establishment of a link with Belgrade will provide conditions for live reports for the RTVS program, daily reports from Kosovo, and the studio is also ready to serve foreign TV teams that can use it to send their reports via international exchange.

Mr. Nenad Ristic says that this program was given high priority in RTVS, and that funding was consequently found. According to him, contacts with UNMiK were established two months ago. The Civilian UN administration in Kosovo suported the opening of the studio, which was an encouraging signal for Serbia, and especially for the local Serbs.

An one-hour-long program from Zvecan, Open Studio, should be broadcast on Wednesday evening, at the time of printing of this issue of NIN, and it is expected that a regular program from this region should start in April. In the second phase, the number of employees should increase from the current twelve to more than 50, and a small studio in Gracanica should also start working.

The first man in the field, the director of the TV center, Milisav Milic, says that they plan to fully cover Kosovo and Metohija with a TV program in the Serb language, since the current RTV Kosovo is not broadcasting a program for the Serb population.

"In the territory between Djeneral Jankovic and Kraljevo it was impossible to watch even the first channel of the RTVS without interference because KFOR and UNMiK members had put a lock on the RTVS repeaters. At the time of the takeover of the Trepca Concern in August 2000, Radio Kosovska Mitrovica was shut down, so that now we are also broadcasting radio program from Zvecan. With the new TV studio, in addition to the 'Jedinstvo's' bureau, and the Information Center, we are slowly building the first media company in Zvecan, a significant future media center," Milic is convinced.

The center is housed in the former Trepca's office building, and Zvecan was chosen for technical and technological reasons, namely for the hill of Sokolica. Next spring additional equipment will be placed on the top of the Zvecan tower. It will allow broadcasting of the signal all the way to Skopje and Kraljevo.

Translated on January 30, 2001