MTV to Launch Channel Serving Former Yugoslav Countries

MTV Europe's newest channel -- MTV Adria -- will serve Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, offering a platform for regional musicians and other artists.

Next summer, people in the Adriatic region who want their MTV will no longer have to rely on the German channel that has so far been the only available option. Starting on 26 August, MTV Europe's newest channel -- MTV Adria -- will begin beaming its programming via satellite and cable into 800,000 homes in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Croatia and Slovenia on 26 August. The channel will eventually cover Serbia-Montenegro and Macedonia as well, including all the countries that once made up Yugoslavia.
"This programming has nothing to do with Yugo-nostalgics or that frame of mind," says the channel's programme director, Terens Stader. "This is for the new generation, this is about urban, progressive, new ideas; this is about looking forward, not looking back. It's the next step and an exchanging ideas in music, in video arts, and exchange of opinions and lifestyles."
"What we want to achieve is that if a viewer from Maribor (Slovenia) goes to Novi Sad (Serbia), he will know where the cool places there are to go, where to go dancing," he said. "This is to create communication between urban areas, which is something that has been missing in the last ten years. If we want to have progress we need communication, and that's what we'll be all about."
MTV Adria will be MTV Europe's 12th channel, joining the ranks of already-established channels such as MTV Espana, MTV Italia and MTV Polska. The channel will hire two people each from BiH, Croatia and Slovenia to work as video jockeys, or VJs. Stader said that the VJs would have to know English and be familiar with Slovenian.
"The reporters will have to be very good in English because they'll be facing Eminem at the European music awards," he said.
Eminem and other American and worldwide acts, as well as already-established MTV shows, will initially make up 80 per cent of MTV Adria's programming, with regional content making up the rest.
Stader said that ratio would change as the channel grows.
"The initiative is to enable the creativity from young artists in the audio-visual [media], to create a new platform for the expression of their creativity," he said. "If that explodes like we'd like it to, the local production could be very soon much more than that."
Already, Stader said, they're foreseeing talk shows, interactive content and bands playing live in the studio.
Though only three countries of the former Yugoslavia will be included at the start, Stader said the channel's playlists would not exclude artists from Serbia-Montenegro or Macedonia, and that later on, the channel would have a competition for VJs and reporters from those countries.
Stader said they hope to complete negotiations with cable operators by the end of 2005, and be able to broadcast in those countries in 2006.
General Manager of MTV Emerging Markets Dean Possenniskie told the press in mid-December that MTV had been researching the possibilities of a new channel in the region for several years.
"Launching a MTV channel in the Adriatic region has been a long-term goal for MTV in Europe, and we are delighted that we are able to celebrate the rich local music scene and cultural diversity of this region through the launch of MTV Adria," he said.