“Radio Skopje is speaking”…
First was the radio. Then radio and television were one. As the system grew and developed, radio and television were separated. In the period 1960-1962, Radio Skopje, which deals with programming, formed a team and sent its workers for training in the radio-television centers in Belgrade and Zagreb and intensively prepared to conquer that segment of broadcasting.
At 18:15 TV Dnevnik, a 20-minute newspaper, then a cartoon and a children’s show, an educational show, foreign languages, a culture show, EPP… So five days a week. A sufficient number of shows and reports were created for the scheduled dates, and children’s puppet shows and educational shows were broadcast live. So until 20:00, and then inclusion in the joint program of the Yugoslav radio-television.
Then the programming needs were appropriate, when the radio was established, the television production was supported and strengthened, conditions were created for the opening of the Second Program, on the radio and the television as a complementary and alternative necessity. Taking into account the diversity of the interest of the audience and the audience and the growth of the Macedonian state, audio and virtual reflection as a public interest for more than eight decades has been and continues to be an activity in the review of contents, testimonies and events followed and documented through the programs of the Macedonian radio and television.
With the opening and completion of the Third Program of the television, responses to the multi-ethnic character of independent Macedonia were more pronounced. In the development processes, professional personnel were created that successfully responded to the assumed long-term production challenges. Daily monitoring of events and information from historical events, major feature series, the rise of the documentary genre, a quality educational program with which generations have grown up and become friends, listening to and learning the Macedonian language, songs, customs and events, are only part of the constitutional and legal obligation of this complex broadcasting system, the pillar of Macedonian sovereignty.
This “new state” in our (Macedonian) case, although it is still in the phase of programmatic-technological transition and emancipation, experienced a stormy development with all the consequences that arise at the same time and was and is continuously the subject of debates, discussions, misunderstandings. In addition, it was often stirred up with campaigns, performances, announcements of occupation and threats of the MRTV type to burn down, to be abolished… and a bunch of nebulos, proposals, all under a common denominator – that it is government, pro-government, oppositional and serves the interests of policies and that it is a producer of media darkness and the like.
At the beginning of the transition, protests in front of MRTV by the right, broken windows, threats, accusations that it is a bastion of communism, a core of layered nepotism… Later, with the change of government in the late 1990s, complaints about program concepts, which this time were evaluated as content selection and blocking, which is in the service of the interests of Vmrov’s policies, disregard for the public interest and the like. And so until the new change of government, etc. And so, here is the ghost of the long-running anthropocentric melodramatic soap opera episode – performance – location – in front of the MRTV building. Stage – a three-meter cardboard monument to the dictator. The protagonists are a dozen media episodic actors and character extras. Personal props – megaphone, chairs, pink glasses – a few “appropriate” texts – shouts, curses, calls of protest, all as a sign of protest for the information blockade and darkness implemented by the public service and in the name of pluralization of the media space.
All this escalation of metafiction, packaged in dark and light shades and with an obligatory amount of media pomp, remains one more episode in the series of melodramatic “pyrotechnic” attempts, for ideological political confusion, as a substitute for the real, above all, existential economic professional problems and solutions. Truths that are silent do not frighten or touch anyone….
As the so-called wild liberalism in the Macedonian media sphere, matures and solidifies the fact of the ether as a resource and sovereign zone above all of our country’s own overall socio-political, multicultural, multi-confessional, spiritual and economic being, which implies continuous and quality media creative presentation of all spheres of living and acting according to high production and information technology standards.
The bad image of MRTV, which we could often read, hear and see in the press and in some of the electronic media – national or concessionary, is in large part the result of a long-term continuous reluctance, first of the policies, and then of part of the public, to face the objective assumptions and the true dimension of this complex production information system, the pillar of Macedonian media sovereignty. The basis of the bad image is the informational part, the so-called reproduction component in the program offer, news and current political and debate shows. The second component for the bad image of MRTV is the starting frame in which the information in the audience is exclusively perceived as a political attitude. But in order for the picture to be clearer, it is necessary to distinguish what in that information is objective, unbiased truth, what is actually the public interest of the citizen. But in the conditions of the plural compendium, the obligation of the public service in the information belts to follow and inform about the protocol, policies and actions of a legally elected government, is perceived as regime-editing policy, pro-government dictatorship, media darkness. So, the complex information-production system is always a hostage, trapped in the calculation zone of policies and individuals “objective journalists”, who even today we can meet and see in the front lines of the parties they faithfully served in their mandates as managers and responsible persons.
But when evaluating and discussing the public service, the fact that the information sector is only a part of the activity – a reproductive component – is always overlooked and skipped over. As a rule, accidentally or intentionally in that “distorted picture” that valuable program part – the production component – programs of an educational, documentary, sports, artistic drama, entertainment character is inserted. All of that doesn’t apply. All those programs were created by generations of honest professionals, playwrights, editors, directors, cameramen, videographers, journalists, screenwriters, scenographers and more than two hundred less visible profiles working in the so-called background mechanics in the medium. They are all piled up on the shameful pillar of shame in the happenings and plays of “independent non-governmental drama enthusiasts”. It’s not fair.
First and most important in that direction is to stop the trend of breaking the production, personnel and technical core of this house as soon as possible – the pillar of Macedonian media sovereignty.
MRTV’s programs over the years enabled the affirmation and wide distribution of audiovisual content, which was a task and one of the key functions, but in terms of structure, they have long since surpassed that assumption and grown into producers of content and genres in which they compress reality, recreate it and incorporate it into the air as a sovereign zone of virtual reproduction of the entire socio-political, economic, cultural and spiritual being.
The above lines are information for a better understanding and for the responsibility in every subsequent attempt to manage and manage the complex and expensive broadcasting system Macedonian Radio-Television, as a result of 40 years of experience in MRTV director, journalist, publicist, screenwriter, composer, first employment – editorial editor, editor-in-chief of the Documentary program, Contact-recreational program, editor-in-chief of the First Program Service of MTV, acting. executive director of MRTV. As a director, signatory of over 2,500 (two thousand and five hundred) TV titles of all types of programs – documentaries and feature films, contact-recreational, entertainment, educational, cultural programs, direct broadcasts, international projects, video bridges, programs from the information sector, journalist, publicist, published over 500 columns in the daily and weekly press, texts and essays from the sphere of politics, culture and communications, theoretical observations through media optics, the fruit of many years of rich and diverse experience.
Active participation in all forms of organization and action in MRT, as a member of the Council of MTV, Film Commission in the Government of the Republic of Moldova, colleges, delegations and others.
Alyosha Simyanovsk
(continued with: MRTV – modalities of active transformation)
