Ivan Ivanovic ended his career on TV Prva in the same style as he started it in 2007, when that television was called Fox - stormy, noisy and in the center of attention. He came in "Cash Taxi" and left with "Evening with Ivan Ivanovic". In the meantime, he was also one of the presenters of the reality show "Survivor", presenter and editor of the Morning program on the former B92 and editor of the entertainment program on Prva. His author's talk show "Evening with Ivan Ivanović" in every segment was at the level of great role models on reputable world televisions. Sometimes even better. Ivanovic interviewed almost everyone from the world of Serbian show business, culture, and sports, from big world stars Brian Ferry and Sting, through Boris Tadic and Aleksandar Vucic to Novak Djokovic. Sensing that the change of owners of Prva and O2 televisions will not turn out well, he announced in his penultimate show that he was leaving, and the last show was not broadcast because the new management was offended by Ivanović's address. A man whose profession has not yet determined whether he is a journalist, presenter or entertainer, graduated in his forties from the Faculty of Law in Belgrade, his first job was a parking fee, and long before his television career he worked as a security guard.
"WEATHER": Professor Anđelka from the Gymnasium "Saint Sava" says you were a weak student, but that you constantly told everyone: "You will see, one day i will be famous. "
IVAN IVANOVIC: Anđa is my high school chemistry teacher. A wonderful woman. We had a specific relationship, I imitated her, the whole school knew that. We were getting ready. I always thought I was going to do something big, I just didn't know exactly what. If I could look at my upbringing now, nothing, except my persistence, indicated that anything in my life could go well. Today, I believe that some hand led me to television, by completely side roads, and it was no accident.
How do you think that nothing could have gone well in your youth??
I come from a working-class family, from a working-class neighborhood known only for the famous criminals it gave to the Belgrade underworld. Obviously, I didn't have the capacity to deal with it. I always had some bigger dreams, but for a long time I couldn't recognize what it was that I would be so good at. Only when I came to television, everything exploded in me, and for the first time in my life I felt that I was where I should be. And that is an incredible feeling, when a person finds himself and goes to work happy. I think few people experience that. I wouldn't trade this for anything.
Why did you choose? late night show, what is the name of the format of the show you hosted?
Because it is crème de la crème television show business. If you need to play football, but you can't play in Zvezda or Partizan, there is no reason to spend your career in Mala Moštanica. If you want to reach the very top and touch the stars on television, you can only do that by working late night show. This is the case in all 56 countries where this format exists, and in each of them the host of such a show is one of the most famous personalities. The foundations of this work were laid by Ed Sullivan, but such a format became famous only with Johnny Carson in the sixties. All of us who deal with it work in the same way: all that matters for such a show is the content, not the form. If you have bad jokes or bad guests or you don't know how to do an interview, you're out of luck. You have Lav Pajkic as an example of how things can deviate from that path. Comedy is hard work, and comedy on television in a country like this is hell.
A certain amount of political satire is implied in such shows. Was it like that with you from the beginning??
Of course. I will never forget the first episode, that is, the pilot show, when I said that it was so cold outside - it was January - that Mlađan Dinkić - then the minister - put his hands in his pockets. Silence in the studio. The audience was in shock, only sighs were heard. Then I realized what was waiting for me and that there would be anything and everything. However, until 2012, no one called me on the phone or complained about anything. Somehow, my jokes about politicians were a normal thing.
Who invited you first??
The director of television, because someone called him before that. Who will remain a secret forever, but the director received an invitation in connection with the show in which Tomislav Nikolić, then a candidate for president, was a guest. Boris Tadić was on the eve of the first round of presidential elections, and Nikolić was on the eve of the second. The idea was to present both equally and let the people decide who they will vote for. That with Tom was the biggest incident up to that point. We recorded the show and then there was a fuss about whether it would even be broadcast. That's when I put my career on the line for the first time in my life and said that I would quit my job if it wasn't broadcast, because I do my best not to be afraid of any political colors and that it is incorrect for the management to color me. The decision to broadcast that show was made at eight in the evening, and the broadcast was at nine. But it was broadcast. A year before, I considered, as a journalist, that it was completely unacceptable that one of the leaders of the opposition, Aleksandar Vučić, could not appear on any national frequency. I invited him on my show and he was the first politician to enter my studio. Then the director of the television told me that he didn't think it was smart and that I would do it, I answered him: "That's the way it has to be." If we want to be free, if we think we are real television, we have to provide equal opportunities to everyone, and whoever is better should win. That's not our concern." Why is there no one today who is allowed to bring the leader of the opposition, whoever he is, to the national frequency, to sit alone on the show for 48 minutes and say what he has? So, everything has changed. There must be a certain level below which no journalist should go.
Who among the opposition politicians has been a guest on your show for the last six years?
It's nobody. I canceled the hosting of politicians after the hosting of Vuk Drašković. It was a great interview, a great show with a 35% share, but the next day REM passed a ban on politicians appearing on entertainment shows during the election campaign. Then I decided that the ban would last forever. Several people who are in the opposition were guests, but the topic was not politics. There were Siniša Kovačević and Dragoljub Mićunović, but we only talked about their books that were current. Somehow I realized that if it can't be done right, then we won't work at all. But I couldn't give up politics in the opening monologue because the idea late night show is to analyze what happened during that day, and in our case everything that happened during the previous week. I've never had anything on the show that wasn't a headline in the newspaper or on the internet. Such shows deal with repackaging public opinion in the past seven days and giving a humorously successful approach to some serious topics. This is, in fact, what you would say with your friends at the bar at the table while you are having your third or fourth drink.
How is the current government, i.e. President Aleksandar Vučić, attitudes towards jokes at their expense?
I think this is about making the regime aware of how powerful they are and what they can do. It is simply their decision to take the media seriously. They have been seriously dealing with the media since January 2014 and now we have the opportunity to see, to say the least, carnage in the media world. Each of us should, at the very least, be uncomfortable even through no fault of our own. I have been doing this work for twelve years and I am the only author who survived the change of regime. Kesić started under Vučić, what he is doing today was not done during Tadić's time. I'm the only one who has experience with both regimes, but the last two years have become really unbearable. Every time I watch an interview with Vučić, I want to die of laughter. You have a completely abnormal situation where a journalist has to be an opponent of the president. A journalist is an instrument that should present the story to the people, not someone who needs to confront the president with his personal views. I also did an interview with him in 2015, and it was an incredible experience for me, when I told him live that I was being censored and described to him how they do it, to which he replied: "Well, why don't you find some television where they will appreciate more?" That interview was not on my show, it was his New Year's interview, since he decides which television it will be on and who will host it... The television insisted that I do it, so I agreed. They escorted me out as if I were being shot, they looked at me so sadly when I entered the studio. I told Vučić that the people were hungry, he drew some fractions on paper, talked about the gross national product, then asked me how much I pay in taxes. The most interesting thing is that the "Journalists don't kneel" protests were held at the same time, and after that show, not a single colleague, not a single newspaper, not a single television said a word about the fact that I told the president that they were censoring me and how they were doing it. Not a word. Neither UNS nor NUNS. That's when I realized that nothing good was written about us and that we didn't even deserve anything good because of such behavior.
And maybe your colleagues don't see you as a real journalist?
I know they don't perceive me, but that doesn't interest me at all. Throughout my career, I stood for truth, freedom and humanitarian work. I can't find anything wrong with that. From time to time I have been able to mention a sexual organ in the show, if it is such a sin that we are going to ignore everything else I have done, then fine.
During the interview with Vučić, did you feel like you had to defend yourself?, which regularly happens to colleagues at RTS when they talk to the president?
Well, I wasn't afraid of him at all, just like I'm not afraid of him today. Here, the system is made so that we are afraid of the state. The state is our service, we pay them to work. Aleksandar Vučić works for us, he is our employee. Is any boss afraid of his employee? Why should you be afraid of him? Fear, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. It's your decision. When you decide or when you are born to not be afraid, that's it. Well, now I don't have a job, so what are we going to do now?
What kind of pressures were you exposed to while working at TV Prva??
First of all, the pressure starts through the tabloids. That pressure is much worse than the political one. It's an orchestrated chase that you know exactly who's going to start and what it's going to look like. She always starts in "Informer" and always with the most abnormal texts about me - that I receive money from the Croatian secret service and destroy Serbia, that I work for tycoons, that I steal Vespas around Belgrade, that I am a drug addict, a scumbag, a traitor. The chain goes when the president says something, it's an immediate signal, like Pavlov's reflex, for the tabloids to attack, they already have it all figured out. No one has any evidence, no one has any facts, because no one is burdened with the weight of morality. And now you are exposed on the pillar of shame, in the end it all ends with some two-meter, 120-kilogram guy who wants to break your arms and legs, and then you go to the high-tech crime department. I have so many visits to that department that I expect someone to take me as a godfather. It is not normal for me to go there ten times a year, and every time it is caused by the statement of the president, minister or some serious statesman. Back in 2011, "Informer" started writing the worst possible nonsense about me, and a smart person has to react then. You have to distance yourself from such people and say: "That's not our profession." This is an outlaw, he has some interests of his own, this is not journalism, these are not journalists. I don't want to be colleagues with those people." Not that you consider yourself a hero if you manage to publish the truth. That should be the normal state of affairs. When I say that Belgrade doesn't have a subway, tomorrow I will wake up as a traitor. And Belgrade does not have a metro. There just isn't. It always ends up in the tabloids. The tabloids are the main instrument of pressure on anyone who thinks differently from this regime. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an opposition, I'm not politically active in any way. I represent a free-thinking man who at this moment freely thinks that nothing is right in this country. Things aren't normal and, sorry, nobody gives a damn about us.
Do you vote?
I'm voting. I have been voting regularly for the past few years. I also had my period of abstinence after Djindjic's murder, and I returned to voting in 2013. But, I think we can still change a lot. I believe that among us journalists - here, I will call myself a journalist - there are 80 percent of normal people who do not feel well when they come home and go to bed after their shows and their interviews. They are not okay with themselves that they had to work like that. I invite them to ask themselves if they really have to. Are they really making so much money that they can't make anywhere else to feel better?
Many will answer that it is easy for you because you have earned a lot of money and you have the comfort of saying that you will not work.
This is what my comfort is based on: the fact that my face really has no price. Now I'm going to sell my apartment, so I'm going to live on it. If that's a good plan, then I'm the emperor. After all, if I can do something like this with my salary, so can someone with far less. It is much easier to find work for lower paying positions than the one I was in. I know I will never again find a job for the salary I had on First. And it doesn't matter to me at all. That's my bottom line of dignity. You can lose everything materially that you made once in your life, then make it a second, third time, but you only lose your dignity once in your life. Do you think that after years of honest work, I should have left my name in a transaction like this in which Prva was sold? In which 200 million euros of state money was diverted within two weeks in front of all of us. Where the new owner did not have an auditor to check the papers in Prva. Well, when you buy a used car, you go to the mechanic to put it on the computer to check if everything is in order. Another thing, do you think that I should be a colleague with Đuk, that we should work in the same company?
And Đuka will come?
Đuka does not have to come, he is in Copernicus, and Copernicus is in Prva. Here's another question: in the New Year's card on television it says "Copernicus group", on what basis did Srđan Milovanović buy Prva as a natural person? There are so many questionable details that I don't want my name to be part of it. At the same time, their removal of the last episode is the seal of all that I said. It is an extremely stupid move that confirmed absolutely everything I told the audience in my address in record time. Which, of course, has not been seen, but it is on YouTube.
Forwards, you didn't joke too much with Vučić in that episode.
That episode was taken down because of the last part where I explain why I'm leaving. Not because of something I said about Prva, but because of what I said about the state of the media in Serbia. That the national frequencies have gone dark. The end, that's the news. Tell everyone not to get carried away. All you can see are glimpses of freedom. These are serious machines, editorial, directorial, which control literally every word that will be spoken. And when something is said that seems like freedom to you, it is planned to be released. To be a semblance of freedom. I was an editor at that television, and when I resigned from that position, no one called me to ask why I did it. When Vučić decided that his interview with Brankic would take place on Fridays at nine o'clock, and no one called me, nor did anyone ask me what I thought about it, but I found out everything on Twitter, I went to the director and said that Vučić can edit the other days as well . I don't have to bother for no reason and come to work, give him the "Morning Program" and "150 minutes" and everything else, so let the man work when he likes. It was unacceptable for me, as the editor of an entertainment program on Twitter, to find out that the programming scheme for which I am responsible has been changed.
Will you join the protest? "Stop the bloody shirts"?
I am not a supporter of the fact that journalists should publicly support any political option. You will never see me at any protest, at any political gathering. I entertain all the people in this country and all I want is for them to think freely. I think that these people and any in the future need to live in a country where they can normally gather and protest against what they don't like in a state that they finance and support themselves. It is an elementary thing in democracy.
Rumor has it that you will do your show for the TOP channel in the future.
I have not yet negotiated with any television station. For now, I'm launching a show with my team, the first episode will be on YouTube on February 8th, and we'll be filming it in my living room. No guests.
