SARAJEVO, BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA – Bosnian national radio-television is in the biggest financial crisis since 90s. The monthly income of television license (taxes that inhabitants of Bosnia&Herzegovina pay) is around 800 000 €. In first 5 months of 2014, BHRT got in total 600 000€ less than in same period of 2013.
Bosnia&Herzegovina has one of the lowest TV taxes in Europe – around 4€ per household. That money is monthly divided as follows:
-25% for FTV and RTRS each (televisions of 2 entities in this country)
-50% for BHRT
But what is the real problem? Lot of people refuse to pay monthly TV taxes because there isn’t any effective law to make them do it.
Taking look in households in neighboring Croatia, we see there is a lot of better situation. They pay 11€ of TV taxes per month, and Croatian national television announced they have monthly income of 11 million €. So HRT gets around 14× more money monthly than BHRT. Yet, both national broadcasters withdrew from Eurovision because of financial problems.
It is very unlikely to see Bosnia&Herzegovina returning in Eurovision in 2015. This country is one of the few in Europe which didn’t shift from analog to digital television signal, so there will be an extra cost for BHRT to do it.
SOURCE: TEVE.BA
EDITOR’S VIEW (LEJLA MAHMUTOVIC)
BHRT is doing a good job considering how little money they work with. They have best documentary and educational program for all generations in Bosnia&Herzegovina, and that is the primary job for public broadcasters. Country isn’t supporting them, but BHRT did a lot to promote this country. They managed to send our Eurovision entrants in war in 90s and continued doing it till 2012 in very poor conditions. We got best possible promotion and we’ve seen by 200 million viewers – all that cost us “only” 25000€ per year (amount of Bosnian Eurovision fee). Hopefully, they will be able to find sponsors to buy us our ticket to Eurovision, show that whole Bosnia followed. Even this year when BHRT didn’t broadcast Eurovision, everybody who uses internet in this country knows about Conchita Wurst.
