The media sustainability index in Serbia fell to 1,45, which means that the market is unsustainable - this is the result of a study by the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade on the impact of digitization on the sustainability of local media.
According to the data of the Agency for Business Registers (APR), there are 2.508 media outlets officially operating in Serbia, with the fact that this number does not include those that are not registered as media houses and that market such content on the Internet. Of that number, 937 are print media, 751 internet portals, 333 radio stations, 244 television stations, 28 news agencies and another 84 websites that are not classically conceived as media, but practically offer media information.
In the study of the Faculty of Economics, it is pointed out that, in contrast to this number of those who make up the "seventh power" in Serbia, the figures that reflect its market power are much more modest.
"Based on the Nielsen agency's assessment of the size of this market, it was worth 2019 million euros in 210, which for the first time exceeded the maximum value of 206 million euros recorded back in 2008, before the global financial crisis began to spill over to Serbia", writes BiF based on a study by authors Galjina Ognjanov and Sanja Mitić.
However, already in 2020, the corona virus again "turned off the company's faucets for advertising, so the value of the media market fell to 198 million euros".
The study draws attention to the internal annual report of the organization Irex Serbia, according to which the revenues of the media registered in the APR amount to 414 million euros, with revenues from advertising having a share of 43 percent. It is estimated that the budgets for advertising are a "small bar", for which, in addition to more than 2.500 registered, a large number of media that are not in the records of APR registered as media companies, and we are talking primarily about media content that is distributed via the Internet, are stolen .
The authors of this study link the fact that "survival of media companies primarily depends on advertising or other types of sponsorship" and the quality of information, which they rate as "generally low."
They also say that the existence of a large number of media operating under the radar of institutions makes it difficult to regulate the market.
The authors also cite CERSID's research, according to which more than a fifth of the population does not trust any media. "That's why they turn to alternative sources of information on the Internet, many of which are of dubious quality, even sources of fake news," says the study of the Faculty of Economics.
S.Ć./FoNet
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