site.btaUPDATED Council for Electronic Media Holds Hearings of Four Candidates for Office of Head of National Radio

Four of seven candidates for the top position at the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) were given hearings at the Council for Electronic Media on Tuesday. The four included the current Director General Milen Mitev, who is running for re-election, Tsvetoslav Georgiev, Helia Chavdarova and Margarit Rusev.

The other three candidates - Iva Doychinova - Dimitrova, Valeri Todorov and Georgi Daskalov, will speak to the regular on Wednesday.

Milen Mitev said that the main issue for BNR is not the amount of its funding, but the model of financing. "The discussion about whether public media funding is adequate is meaningless unless we first determine the purpose of this funding," Mitev said. He mentioned that the right approach would be to clearly outline the media's public mission first. He argued that the outdated system for funding public media obstructs medium- and long-term planning and disconnects the radio's funding from its actual activities. "This issue is somewhat connected to the challenge of attracting motivated staff to work at BNR. Additional challenges the radio encounters include the brand not being well-recognized among young people and a trend of reduced listening time," he noted. Despite these challenges, BNR is "well-positioned": at present, it is one of the leading information media organizations in Bulgaria, with an average of around 110,000 listeners at any given time, he added.

According to Tsvetoslava Georgieva, the biggest asset of BNR is its people - those who work for it and those to whom the whole programme is directed. "In my concept, I have put all the focus on the human factor, the interaction between the teams, the coordination and synergy between them, the optimisation of work processes and, of course, the pay for the work, which I think has been an issue for all BNR managers," she noted. Georgieva explained that, if elected for the position, she envisages reopen the post of programme director.

Helia Chavdarova said that BNR is indebted to three categories of people: "children, adolescents, disadvantaged people and the ecosystem in which we live". "The dialogue with listeners seems to have been lost a long time ago. I want to restore dialogue first via the kind of journalism we offer, that communicates with people and their problems," Chavdarova noted. She said there should be somewhere for people take their tipoffs. "We should go to check these tipoffs, to see why, for example, a given street is not accessible for a disabled person," she noted. She said it is the job of BNR journalists to raise an issue again and again until it is resolved.

Margarit Rusev said that he envisages introduction of a competitive approach in the selection of staff and limited tenures for the heads of the BNR programmes. "I think that sometimes habits get in the way, and routine hinders development. In my view, an introduction of such tenure - without necessarily limiting the number of terms - would help to achieve better results," he said. He sees a conflict as the Director General is appointed for a fixed term - but not the programme directors, and said that some programme directors cannot be removed, no matter what. 

Milen Mitev's term expires on October 30. The election of a successor is due on October 17.