For the period of the last twenty years, advertising in BiH has had its ups and downs. During the last decade, the advertising industry has recorded significant economic progress. Investment growth in the advertising field has influenced the growth and development of other industries associated with the marketing sector. This mainly concerned the production of TV sitcoms (origin. Viza za budućnost, Crna hronika, Lud zbunjen normalan, etc). Considerable share in production costs has been covered by incomes deriving from the marketing industry, Senad Zaimović wirtes for the BHN Bulletin.

In his opinion, stablishing associations – industry – based institutions have not been followed by appropriate activities by market participants. BiH had, before any other regional country, institutions – associations, including JIC (Joint Industry Committee). The institutions are currently ranked very low and can hardly sustain in media branch since they managed to prevail more as a result of individual enthusiasm, rather than general industry interest. The common sense conclusion then follows: Taking into consideration that institutions are considered as “God’s gift” and supported and helped by international organizations, and had not been formed as “sui generis”, that is, formed as part of a network and results deriving from industry interests, so, therefore, they have neither met and fulfilled their primary function, looking from long – term perspective, nor have they operated with the capacity required for their operating upon which they had, in the first place, been formed and established.

The market game between public and private media houses resulted in the devaluation of commercial marketing prices. Market prices have been formed based on public budget allocation amounts. Public service, due to problems with the collection of money for RTV Tax Fees was forced to turn its business operations and activities to commercial program contents. Program scheme contents have constantly contained commercial contents, including telenovelas. Sitcoms have been directed and targeted towards to most powerful common merchandise advertising sector, that is, directed to most demanding target advertising group: female persons aged between 19 and 49 years old. Bearing in mind the RTV Tax Fee incomes, including the absence of prompt reactions to offers towards the market and conditions of requirements necessary for the financing of fundamental expenses and costs, public TV media houses have created lowest possible advertising prices which represented the limiting and bordering point of economic sustainability of commercial media houses. Under such circumstances, commercial media houses have been compelled to follow low advertising prices, which were in contrast with investing in production and quality – based programs.

Additionally, their viewership share has been worsening from year to year. Also, the so-called, media spill over, as specialized and exceptionally well designed and produced global programs coming from neighboring countries and broadcasted through cable TV operators made a significant impact on total advertising potential. The domestic and local audience has been turning their attention vastly towards program contents broadcasted from neighboring countries, mostly including TV sitcoms, and music TV shows. The decline in advertising investments caused selling of certain TV stations, such as ATV Banjaluka and Pink BH. Advertising has been following these trends and practices, resulting in an increasing number of international advertisers conquering BiH market as available (free of charge) value through arrangements with international advertising branch offices located outside BiH, that is, balk – affordable and cheap buying of commercial time on TV programs provided by TV cable operators (film/movies program, sport venues, music TV shows etc.), which consequently had impact of production industry. Specialized agencies and production houses minimized the production of domestic/local programs; agencies would operate with minimum quantities of quality communications materials (printed materials, audio, and video advertisements).

Public service does not fulfill its legal duty to invest the third of its income into outer production. Simply, the public sector is also experiencing difficult and hard the situation as far as it is market survival is concerned. Taking into account that the best price that can be accomplished in the advertising market is approximately BAM 35.00 for one hour of viewership (CPP) and if we hypothetically say that the viewership of certain program is 10% at the state level (BiH) (which in fact is quite an optimistic estimate), then during the certain contract (for instance domestic /local TV sitcom), we could ensure and acquire maximum income amounting around BAM 8.400.00 which is certainly in an insufficient amount of money to cover expenses and costs of relatively solid and quality – based program. Each episode should require double the amount of BAM 8.400.00 if we take into account fixed and variable – fixed expenses that every TV station has, then investing into domestic/local production actually seems like mission impossible. TV stations instead, decide to purchase low – cost, mostly Turkish series with the reasonable price of EUR 1.500.00 to 2.000 per episode.

The full analysis can be found here: http://safejournalists.net/advertising-industry-in-bosnia-and-herzegovina-bh-media-existence-jeopardized/