Nova TV: The Future's Pink?

Croatia's first private television channel, Nova TV, is the subject of a €30m bid from the Serbian channel TV Pink, according to reports in today's Jutarnji list. Nova TV itself has promised a response during the working week.

Mitrović is in any case prepared to invest up to €50m in building one or two Croatian studios for his Pink network, and is also investigating opportunities in Slovenia with the Pop TV station.

Nova TV, home of the Slovenian/Croatian/Serbian crime drama Balkan Inc. and broadcaster of the largest-scale pop promotion event Hrvatski radijski festival, also introduced music reality television to Croatia in 2003 with the Story Super Nova Music Talents project, covered in-depth by Draxblog at the time.

TV Pink, meanwhile, is Serbia's largest commercial channel, best known for its entertainment programming, its domestic and foreign soap operas, and its promotion of showbusiness-folk music. For many - such as Željko Cvijanović from Blic News, or Jared Manasek in the Columbia Journalism Review - the channel is synonymous with the development of Serbian turbofolk in the 1990s, when Mitrović was well-connected to the ruling regime.

Nova TV's previous associations with turbofolk prompted controversy in 2005, when its journalist Petar Vlahov travelled to Belgrade to interview Ceca Ražnatović for his Drugo lice show. The much-publicised interview was never broadcast due to the volume of public complaints - mainly at Ceca's description of her late husband as 'the greatest Serbian war commander', although fans of Dinamo Zagreb seemed just as upset to see Vlahov hand her their club's shirt. (Here's Draxblog again on the whole shebang.)

However, when asked whether a Croatian channel under his ownership would broadcast showbusiness-folk music, Mitrović told Jutarnji list that 'it would depend on a detailed analysis and it is possible that there might not even be any at all.'

Mitrović's ambitions towards the Croatian market have already been discussed in the Croatian media: in 2004, the weekly Nacional reported that 'the owner of TV Pink wants to Balkanise Croatia and open the doors for the broadcasting of Serbian folk music' by purchasing Nova TV, Croatia Records and the CCN network of local television stations. Interviewed by Globus magazine last year, Mitrović stated that taking over Croatia Records would not be in his company's 'strategic interest', but did admit an interest in CCN.

Two years on from Nacional's suspicions, Croatia's broadcast media remain an exception to the observation that the 'doors' have already been opened to Serbian folk music for some time, especially among teenagers - see, for instance, the results of a major survey conducted for Jutarnji list this spring.

In other news, Croatia has a new Miss: 18-year-old Ivana Ergić from Vodice. She sides with Severina rather than Vlatka Pokos, since Index ask...