In the 1990s, the Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević appeared to liberalise the Serbian TV market by allowing a select few private companies to broadcast. However, these companies had to have a contract with the state broadcaster, RTS, meaning that only those with shows that were to Milošević’s taste were allowed to operate.
Milošević particularly liked broadcasters such as the notorious Pink TV, which offered glitzy entertainment featuring non-stop turbo folk music on giant stages with seemingly endless numbers of semi-naked singers.
These programmes provided a useful distraction from the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. They helped dull the sensitivities of the population to the bloody sieges of Vukovar, Srebrenica and Dubrovnik. They also kept viewers on an exclusive diet of government propaganda because they offered no space for alternative political views.
