In our series of case studies on how media organisations in the Western Balkans tackle financial challenges, GFMD talked to RTV SLON, a Bosnian local commercial radio station, about its strategies for ensuring financial sustainability.
| 18. September 2024
In the rapidly changing media landscape of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), RTV SLON stands as a resilient, independent media house, serving the country’s most populous region through radio, television, and online platforms and employing several strategies to navigate and ensure financial sustainability even in the midst of a global economic crisis.
Damir Đapo, editor-in-chief at RTV SLON, shared insights into the strategies employed by the organisation to ensure its financial sustainability.
Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, RTV SLON’s income was generated exclusively from marketing. However, the global economic disruption caused by the pandemic led to a sharp decline in advertising revenues, pushing the organisation to seek alternative funding sources to mitigate the impact of economic downturns and political pressures. Grants from international organisations and donors have become increasingly crucial in supplementing marketing revenue.
“Our primary source of income remains marketing, but the lack of funds is compensated by grants from international organisations and donors.”
One of the most significant challenges RTV SLON faces is the influence of political movements on major advertising agencies, especially those based in Belgrade and Zagreb.
“Political movements and relationships with major advertising agencies based in Belgrade and Zagreb also impact the work of independent media, with marketing budgets often being allocated based on political suitability. This places enormous pressure on private and independent media houses in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), and RTV SLON finds itself in an even more specific situation.”
RTV SLON’s unique position as the only independent media organisation in the region producing predominantly informative programming adds another layer of difficulty, especially as public media houses funded from the public budget try to undermine private media by offering services at dumping prices.
“Another challenge is the competition posed by government or public media houses, which are funded from public budgets, do not face marketing constraints, and attempt to undermine the work of private and independent media with dumping prices.”
The combination of political pressures and influences on clients and advertising agencies, amidst a global economic crisis has a major impact on media revenues, making it nearly impossible to return to the marketing revenues levels of five years ago.
“This challenge has been ongoing since 2020, and it is predicted to last for at least another five years, as the media industry is always the first to feel the effects of advertisers’ cost-cutting. This is a challenge we have faced since 2020, and we continue to fight, trying to secure stability through revenue diversification.”
Despite the ongoing challenges, RTV SLON highlights its success in adapting to the new reality brought on by the pandemic.
“We always highlight as our success the way we managed to adapt to the new situation at the beginning of 2020 when the first crisis broke out with the pandemic… We quickly made strategic decisions to start diversifying our income by opening new fields and ways to earn so that we could survive.”
While this strategy has helped, securing project funding is not without its difficulties as well.
“Securing grants is a challenging way of generating revenue, as project activities require trained and qualified personnel, which further increases costs for the media.”
In response to this, the organisation has focused on building internal capacity to manage donor-funded projects effectively. This involves hiring quality staff and providing continuous education.
Collaboration with other media organisations and NGOs in the region to work together, and share knowledge and resources has also been vital.
“Collaboration is very useful to us, from exchanging experiences to sharing news and information, and sometimes even working together on processing certain topics and tasks.”
RTV SLON urges international donors and organisations to remain engaged in the region for at least the next five years. Their support is critical for the survival of private and independent media, which continue to operate under immense financial and political pressure.
“Support is welcome through both development and institutional projects, as well as support to produce high-quality content.”
This is essential to ensuring the media landscape in the Western Balkans remains diverse and independent.
Learn more about the Mapping of media assistance and journalism support programmes in the Western Balkans region.
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