Igor Bozic (BetaPhoto/Media Center Belgrade)
On Dec. 7, Igor Bozic, the program director of N1, offered his apologies to viewers over the previous 24-hours’ blackout but insisted that the regional news station “had to use darkness to make a statement and show what Serbia would be like without the N1 and Nova S television channels.”
“The idea was to show solidarity with Nova, which is competing for [Serbia’s] fifth [national broadcasting] frequency,” Bozic explained.
According to him, viewers were deliberately not informed in advance of the reasons for the blackout so as to mislead them into believing that N1 and Nova S had been removed from cable.
While the regime, Bozic says, has been implying that the blackout was staged to serve the interests of the stations' owners, the program director insists that the sole motivation was promoting freedom of the press. “It’s in [N1’s] interest to be viewed throughout Serbia. It’s in our interest to make heard information that doesn’t come from a single source,” Bozic concluded.
The N1 director added that his station’s drastic move was made to alter the viewers’ reality into what could be expected unless the public takes action.
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