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Kosovo Independent National Television Stations
Move Towards Profitability
In the first quarter of 2004 independent television stations were having trouble paying staff on time. Advertising rates per second, the best available measurement of the value of the space sold by TV stations, was barely creeping above the low of €1.9 reached in 2003. In March 2004 all media in Kosovo, public and independent, were criticized by the international community for their inflammatory coverage of the deaths of three Albanian children in the river dividing the Serb and Albanian communities in Mitrovice.
These failings encapsulated the weakness of independent media in Kosovo. The businesses were vulnerable. Without donor support they couldn’t pay their staff. The weakness in advertising revenue per second, a broad indicator of the overall health of the Kosovo economy, showed that as the internationals disengaged, commercial advertisers were failing to take up the slack. Media editors were under attack, often unfairly, for thinking as Albanian speaking Kosovars first, professional journalists second.
Yet the crisis has passed. A combination of donor intervention, improved financial management and advertising sales skills, and, most of all, the sheer entrepreneurial courage by the management of the TV stations has made them able to cover their monthly outgoing expenses from their own resources, a tipping point reached sometime during the third quarter of 2005. They can now contribute to their own investment rather than rely on the donors for everything.
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