July 13, 2009

Editor-in-Chief of Radio Belgrade Dusan Radulovic has assessed that 6 of 12 language services of the International Radio Serbia should not be disbanded and that the Serbian Government reconsider that suggestions ,as well as to ponder on the function of this media house. Our reporter Mirjana Nikolic talked to Dusan Radulovic.

The International Radio Serbia (Radio Yugoslavia ) has receive a draft Contract from the Ministry of Culture, according to which the French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Greek and Arab services should be disbanded, while the remaining programs would be broadcasted in the English, Chinese, Russian, Albanian, Spanish and Serbian languages.

“The short wave broadcasts should not be canceled, and if the country wishes to make some savings, it should decrease the number of various advisors, for example”, Radulovic says in his interview to our radio. According to this long-time journalist and associate of numerous national and world media, the savings achieved by disbanding these services would be insignificant, since the transmitter is already working around the clock, and the satellite channel has been rented for a long-term. “I believe that the cancellation of these services should be discussed again. The Government needs to think about the function of a station such as Radio Yugoslavia. Many countries in the region have tackled the same issue, and their world services are functioning normally”, added Radulovic.

He pointed that he would not like to engage in the story of the image of the country, while underlining that all short-wave services are related to the state policy, and therefore, the BBC world service for example, is financed directly from the budget planned by the Government, since it is a service that the country needs. “It is a two-way channel, in which the interest of the state is assessed – from the economic interest, to the interests of the Diaspora, for which the radio is an indispensible source of information. Only while living abroad I was able to fully appreciate the meaning if the world nostalgia, which comes over you like a wave, while transferring the information into other languages as well. For the Serbian Diaspora, Radio Yugoslavia is the main source of information. Many of the young people who have left the country 20 or 30 years ago are now parents. Some children speak Serbian, while some other do not, and for them it is important to continue the broadcasts in those significant languages”, specified Dusan Radulovic.

He added that regardless of the existence of new technologies, such as the Internet, the function of a radio like ours is still very much needed. “There is no need to play avant-garde where it is not necessary. Let other around the world be the first to cancel all their short-wave services, and then we can think about it”, stated the Editor-in-Chief of the Radio Belgrade. With regards to the request from the Ministry of Culture to provide the information about the number of listeners of Radio Yugoslavia, he described it as meaningless. “I could have the greatest number of listeners, if I would try to follow the line of least resistance and adapt to the public taste. We have a social interest to preserve the stations like this”, Dusan Radulovic concluded.