site.btaCouncil of Electronic Media Concludes Hearings of Candidates to Head National Radio

The Council for Electronic Media (CEM) concluded the hearings of the candidates for the post of director general of the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR). On Wednesday, three of them - Iva Doychinova - Dimitrova, Valery Todorov and Georgi Daskalov - presented their concepts for the development of the media.

Unfortunately, BNR fails to make the reforms needed to reach the young and active audience, noted during her hearing Doychinova-Dimitrova. "With all its eleven programmes, BNR ranks second-to-last with all its eleven programmes among the active audience of 25-54-year-olds, in this case urban. This shows that it fails to reach the active audience. It is the radio of rural settlements, of a more respectable age category, which I respect immensely, because if anyone is a passionate listener of Horizont, it is my mother," she said.

According to Valery Todorov, the national radio programmes need to be profiled, as there is now a sense of sameness. "Each of the programmes, if we take both Horizont and Hristo Botev, has its own sufficiently clarified and pre-set profile. I think most of the shows came out of that profile. Uniformity started in a sense with everyone doing the same thing," he said. Todorov noted that there was a fatigue among the traditional audience. "It stems from the similarities in formats, from a certain traditionalism that emanates from classical media," he noted.

Georgi Daskalov pointed out that the website and the air of the Bulgarian National Radio should be viewed in the same way. "A lot of money is needed to modernise the facilities and especially the servers," he explained. "If the situation become critical, for example if there is an earthquake, what will everyone do? They will pick up the phone, go out and look at BNR to see if they are reporting anything, Daskalov said, arguing that it would not be good if the website stopped working at that moment.

On Tuesday, members of the media regulator heard the concepts for the development of the radio of the incumbent BNR Director General Milen Mitev, whose term expires on October 31, of Tsvetoslava Georgieva, Helia Chavdarova and Margarit Rusev.

The election of BNR's next director general is scheduled to take place on Thursday, October 17.