In the early morning of March 24, while the night owls were listening to music and waiting for the news at three o'clock, they could hear the voice of a B92 announcer: "You have been listening to Radio B92. You will not listen to it anymore because of technical problems." For about half an hour, there was silence at Radio B92 frequency and then the signal totally disappeared.
What was happening at the time in the studio? "From the moment when at 11:15 p.m. that night we broadcast the news that Javier Solana had transferred his authority to Wesley Clark, phones had been ringing non-stop. Slowly the panic subsided," says Bojana Lekic, editor of the B92 news program. "At about 2:50a.m, I was typing in three o'clock news at my computer. There were about 10 people in the news program office. Then, about seven to eight policemen, fully geared up, entered our premises. All together, there were about 15 of them on the fifth floor of the House of Youth, where B92 premises are located. I only heard: 'Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Madam, take your hands off the keyboard. Everyone else, stay away from phones and mobile phones. If anyone touches a mobile phone, it will be confiscated.' Then, all the phones started ringing. The policemen were escorted by two Federal telecommunications inspectors. They were very polite. They had a document stating that the program must be taken off air and the part of the transmitter which allows broadcasting confiscated because we have overstepped the allowed transmission power."
(The employees explain that the [recently acquired] transmitter on the roof of the House of Youth has the power of 1kW, but that the transmission power never exceeded 250W. They say that the first action of the new management was to crank up the power all the way, so that now B92 is breaking all sorts of Yugoslav telecommunications rules and laws. It is also broadcasting without a license, since the current temporary license expired on June 1)
"The document was full of errors. Some of them were vary basic," continues Bojana Lekic. "Veran Matic's name was listed under the title of the technical director. We were laughing while reading the document but they told us not to waste our time, since the document was only a formal excuse. The inspector told us: 'Do not object. Whatever you say, we'll ignore. It has been decided that you cannot broadcast anymore'. Then they demanded that Veran Matic sign the document. We phoned Veran and the whole thing was almost over. However, when Veran arrived, while the policemen were already leaving the news program office, their commander came back and said: 'You are Veran Matic, huh? Give me your identification card.' Veran gave him his ID card and then the commander ordered: 'Actually, follow me'," says Bojana Lekic. "He spent the following eight hours in jail, in the main Belgrade Police Station," says Radio B92 director Sasa Mirkovic. "We have never received any official information about why he was taken into custody, nor why he was released."
After this event Radio B92 continued with work. Program was on 24 hours a day and was distributed via satellite and the Internet to the members of the Association of the Independent Electronic Media (ANEM). "Naturally, we adapted our programming to the state of war," says Aleksandar Timofejev, journalist of Radio B92. "All jingles were changed. At that time we tried to provide as much information as possible and were very successful in that, because of our huge network of correspondents: over thirty members of ANEM implies at least that many correspondents all over Serbia, in addition to those from abroad. The program received good reviews from the Serbian Ministry for Information and others who were supposed to listen to us [official censors]".
That went on for about ten days. During that time, as Sasa Mirkovic says, Radio B92 premises were regularly visited by the State Secret Service agents. They questioned all the leading people in B92. "That was probably the preparation for what happened on April 2. They were interested in the organization of the Radio, they talked to our security chief, demanded to be given lists of all employees and part time staff," says Mirkovic.
"Our people already worked under pressure because of anonymous phone threats and very strange mobilization notices. They would receive them at the Radio offices, even at cafes and nightclubs they frequent. All the staff members who were in the country and received mobilization notices responded to them," says Bojana Lekic.
"I was reading morning news at nine and at one moment I realized that I can't hear myself any more and that I was taken off-line," says Natasa Narandzic, former journalist of B92. "I looked up and saw that from the other side of glass sound technician Marko was showing me to get out of the studio. In the corridor I saw some strangers, police, guys with crew cuts... One of them, I think he was a Court executor, hurried me on: 'Enough already, get out already!' We went to the ground floor and set in the cafe 'Tacka' [Dot]."
The person sitting at the time in Mirkovic's chair, Aleksandar Nikacevic, better known as the leader of the official Student's Union in 1991 when he unsuccessfully fought against student protests in the center of Belgrade, explains for Vreme how he became the director of B92: "The founder of Radio B92 is the Youth Council of Belgrade, as a legal heir to the City Conference of the Alliance of Socialist Youth (GK SSO) [the official youth organization in the former Yugoslavia]. The publicly owned [a fuzzy ownership category used in the Yugoslav socialism; it implies that the company is owned by the "society", instead of by the state, and managed by its workers; since 1987, "social" ownership has largely been interpreted as state ownership] broadcasting company B92 was founded in 1990. The decision about the change of the founder or the ownership structure has never been made. The former management, after 1991, proclaimed the employees' council as the main management body in the company. Legally, that is meaningless, since workers councils functioned in the companies which were founded before the enactment of the Law about Companies in 1990 and this company was founded after that. At the beginning of the year, Vladan Zagradanin was appointed the president of the Youth Council of Belgrade. The new leadership immediately began to collect documentation. As the founder of Radio B92, the Youth Council of Belgrade adopted the new statute of the company, since the old one was in no way adjusted to the law. Based on the new Statute, a Governing Board was appointed, and it named the new director and editor-in-chief. Documentation was handed over to the Commercial Court, and it entered the company in the registry. Representatives of the founder, director, executors of the Commercial Court and two policemen took the possession of the station on April 2. The security was changed immediately and because of the fear of possible sabotage of the equipment, the employees were ordered to leave the premises and report to work on Monday. The inventory of everything we found on the premises was started immediately."
"The Youth Council of Belgrade is not a legal heir of GK SSO, because it is entered in the registry of civic organization under a different number, so that the only evidence of their legal status is a statement made in their founding charter," says Samardzic. "Even if they were a legal heir to GS SSO, they cannot change the Statute on their own since, unlike in state owned and private companies, socially owned companies are managed by their employees or, in the case of those companies with less than 50 employees (as is the case with B92) a management board whose members are all the employees. Companies with less than 50 employees to not elect an Oversight and Governing Boards, unless that is explicitly stated in the Statute. The Statute of B92, dating from the December of 1998, does not mention a Governing Board. Therefore, all the decisions that have been made - the change of the Statute, election of the Governing Board, dismissal of the old and appointment of a new director - contravene the Federal law about Companies from 1996 and the Statute. The fashion in which the decision of the Commercial Court was implemented and the new director assumed his duty is illegal and is full of irregularities".
The Youth Council is an alliance of about ten organization of fundamental social importance: Scouts, Vacation Alliance, Popular Technology, the Alliance of Esperanto Speakers... "They will now probably try to prove that they have invested something into B92. But we even had to pay a rent for the use of office space," claims Mirkovic.
He says that Zagradanin demanded that he hand over the keys and stamps immediately: "They seized from our security keys for the part of the second floor of the House of Youth, where our Internet center was located, of the fifth floor where Radio premises were located, sixth floor where our management was located, and the tenth and eleventh floors, rented by ANEM. Until today, we haven't been able to gain entrance to any of these offices. They seized all of that because they liked the equipment. ANEM is a separate legal entity. That is as if someone breaks into your apartment and seizes it, but then he also likes the apartment next door and seizes that as well. They stole the equipment which mostly does not belong to Radio B92. ANEM is a professional association registered in the Commercial Court and has three founders: Radio B92, Radio BOOM from Pozarevac, and Radio Bajina Basta," says Mirkovic. Dusan Matic, ANEM coordinator, relates that the new team found the equipment fascinating: "As soon as they entered they started walking around carrying cameras and computers and shouting 'Now we can play video games!'".
"Former director Sasa Mirkovic refused to hand over company's documentation, claiming that it was not there," says Aleksandar Nikacevic. "However, we found a part of financial and other documentation. We found out that all the hard-discs had been taken out, apart from the one in Mirkovic's computer. In general, they worked illegally, especially regarding foreign currency transactions: they drew foreign currency from accounts in Hungary and even issued foreign currency receipts inside the country. We are collecting the documentation about the financial transactions of the company so far. It has been chaotic and disorderly and the costs were enormous: only in March, they spent 130,000 [roughly $1,000] dinars on mobile and 150,000 [roughly $1,200] dinars on wired phones. In the first half of March the salaries were ten times larger than the ones we have been paying since we took over. I found parallel lists of their official salaries (minimal) and 'unofficial', which were enormous. They collected from the listeners 400,000 dinars for the transmitter and spent every year millions of Deutsch Marks."
Mirkovic denies that the hand-over has ever been carried out: "I told them that I did not consider the record they had made official in any way and that I refused to sign it. They can now speculate with all sorts of stuff and forge and abuse forged documents, but we know very well that none of that has been signed. I really do not know what is on that hard disk. Nikacevic did not demand from our lawyers that the documentation be handed over. The documentation he demanded is in connection with the registration of the radio and that can be obtained in the Court. Our accountant stayed behind exactly in order to explain everything. She was abused and finally left the building".
Aleksandar Nikacevic says that B92 was not only a local radio station: "That was the largest information-propaganda center in the Balkans, media miracle in every conceivable way. They had extremely developed publishing activity with more than 100 titles, they had TV, music and video production. Through ANEM they covered almost 70 percent of the territory of Yugoslavia and had satellite links with the world - we found two of them."
"They broke into B92 so fast that they hadn't had enough time to ask around and find out about our activities," says Sasa Mirkovic. He adds to Nikacevic's list of ctivities Internet providing, and explains that within publishing activities, there were CD's, VHS and cassette tapes, books, magazines "Rec" and "Profemina" and cinema "Rex" as a cultural center. Mirkovic opines that it must be hard for Nikacevic to figure all that out.
"Rade Radulovic was very polite. He said that he felt as in somebody else's home," remembers Bojana Lekic. "Our reply was: 'We already work here.' Then, the new management said that it did not intend to be vengeful, that they would like to keep all of us but that the program had to be more patriotic and pro-SPS and pro-JUL ["leftist" ruling parties in Serbia: the Socialist Party of Serbia and the United Yugoslav Left]. We decided to could stay on our premises until we felt professionally endangered. That happened very quickly, since none of us accepted to do their program". Antonella Riha, one of the journalists, says that at a meeting the new director told her that the new editorial policy would be in accordance with national interests. "To my question what these national interests were, the reply was that it is a national interest - to love president Milosevic".
According to Dusan Matic, although the new management offered to keep all the employees, they also introduced a new team. "I think that they were surprised when they realized the scale of our news production. They realized that they could never achieve that with the people they had brought from radio Interspid".
The music programming staff had "a cardiac arrest" when the new music director Zoran Lekovic told them that from then on they were to play only Spanish and Russian music. The new management realized that it would not be able to use more than 2 percent of the music library, generally taken to be the best in Belgrade, for its music programming concept.
Mirkovic claims that all 45 full-time and 150 part-time employees have refused to work for the new management. Dismissal notices have begun to arrive since June 1. So far, 17 employees have been fired. Nikacevic says that he has fired everyone and adds that he started sending dismissal notices a month after the takeover, although legally he could have done that as soon as five days after the takeover.
Most of the fired journalists have found a way to survive. Most of them work as correspondents of the remaining ANEM members. The same does not apply for the members of the music programming and technical staff. Apparently, so far only one sound technician has found a job. A few of them work as DJs in Belgrade nightclubs. Most of the people who worked in the "real" B92 are still in touch. "Our first goal was to be in touch with the staff and make sure that none of them is harmed," says Dusan Matic.
The people who were not connected with the news programming have organized in several ways support to the real Radio B92. The action "100 Radio Stations for B92" and two NET-aids were held. On that occasion, in twenty cities all over the world, concerts for the benefit of B92 were held and everything was broadcast over the Internet.
The old team is preparing to offer a 24-hour news service on the Internet. In ten days between the beginning of the war and the takeover, the site recorded 18 million hits, or 1.8 million a day. The staff has announced the renewal of the radio program production, which will be sent to local radio stations via satellite and the struggle for the return of Radio B92 on air. Radio VK from Kikinda, which started broadcasting with new equipment (the old one had been confiscated) on June 13, has already broadcast a joint program with B92, hosted by Bojana Lekic.[on June 22, VK radio was again banned and taken off air]
On the other hand, the number of listeners has significantly declined since the takeover. The most recent poll, carried out by the company "Beografiti", which has been conducting regular polls about the audience ratings of the media in the capital under the title "Beomedia", shows that Radio B92 has fallen from the first place in November 1998 to the ninth place in May. The poll was conducted on the sample of 500 persons, representative with respect to age, gender, education and the place of living [of the greater Belgrade population]. The poll results indicate that the number of listeners of B92 has fallen from 580,000 to 108,000 and the audience rating from 12.83 percent to 3.22 percent. The participation of the highly educated among the listeners has decreased. Besides, in the past about two thirds of the listeners were loyal audience, while that number has now decreased to 40 percent. Darko Kocijan, one of the pollsters in charge of the "Beomedia" poll, says that this fall in ratings makes sense, taking into account the change in editorial policy. He explains that the decrease in the proportion of loyal listeners indicates stagnation or further fall in ratings in the future.
"People ask us why we didn't go through privatization," says Sasa Markovic. "I respond with a counter-question: do you remember that both 'Studio B' and 'Borba' went through privatization and what happened to them? Let us not deceive ourselves - in this country every privatization would have been annulled. They have tried to snuff out B92 twice already, but then there was no state of emergency, press censorship, NATO aggression, inability to get support because of the bombs".
It seems that exactly because no one could have protected B92 during the war, the authorities jumped at the chance to finally get rid of them. It could have been predicted that the former "good collaboration with the Youth Council", mentioned by Sasa Mirkovic, would not last forever.
"Competition" was declared one of the two best documentaries at the festival. Dusan Masic used his first meeting with Aleksandar Nikacevic to congratulate him for the award. Nikacevic asked what sort of award that was. When that was explained to him, according to Masic, he exclaimed: "Let's make a cocktail!"