It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Multi-Channel World

There's unfortunate news for Ceca Ražnatović, whose performances and videos have apparently been dropped from the playlist of the Serbian channel TV Pink after a witness in a court case against the Zemun Clan accused her of suggesting the kidnap of Pink's owner Željko Mitrović. In certain quarters, Pink and Ceca have been all but synonymous, despite Mitrović's attempts to take his station upmarket by cutting back the amount of newly-composed folk music it broadcasts.

Should the collapse of Ceca's relationship with Pink become permanent, it'll be almost as unfortunate news for tabloid picture editors across the ex-Yugoslav region, who like nothing better than to illustrate the briefest mention of Pink with a picture of the woman herself. (Of Ceca, that is. Not of Pink.)

In the long run, however, one wonders if the image of Mitrović and his channel might benefit from 'dececaizacija', if its first associations - according to a Globus journalist who interviewed him in 2005 - remain 'the folk programme, silicone beauties and prettifying the wartime reality of Serbia under sanctions.'

The contemporary TV Pink now uses 12 studios across the ex-Yugoslav region and is broadcast in every ex-Yugoslav state except Croatia (although Croatian viewers with the right satellite or cable connection can pick up the Pink BiH signal). However, Mitrović has shown interest in investing in the 'huge potential of the Croatian media market' (as he told Globus) for some time - whether by buying into its largest record label Croatia Records, building a film-making complex in the country, or becoming involved with one of the private national terrestrial channels, Nova TV.

Turning to some (for now) thoroughly unrelated news: Večernji list reports that multi-channel digital terrestrial television is coming to Croatia, with 32 new channels expected to go live across the country by the end of 2009 and concessions to be awarded in 2008. (If you thought the politics involved where four national channels were concerned were intricate enough, wait until there are 36 of them.) Assuming the Croatian digital landscape evolves in the same way as the UK's, expect the multiplex to be made up of existing channels broadening their portfolios, plus new arrivals taking their first steps into the national media market.

New arrivals like... well, perhaps like Željko Mitrović?

Prima Donna: Zorica Andrijašević

The final of the 10th Hrvatski radijski festival - Croatia's largest pop competition - will be taking place in Trogir this weekend.

Among the 24 finalists (who include the Macedonian singer Toše Proeski, a widely-tipped duet between Lana Jurčević and Luka Nižetić, and Marko Perković Thompson with another song from his delayed Bilo jednom u Hrvatskoj project) is a familiar name from the 1990s Croatian dance scene, Zorica Andrijašević Donna.

Andrijašević's songwriting team, responsible for most of the songs on her comeback album Snovi (Dreams), are - to say the least - unusual for Croatian showbusiness: Serbian folk composer Zoran Lesendrić-Kiki and the best-known lyricist in Serbian showbusiness-folk, Marina Tucaković.

Closer co-operation with Croatian musicians would be nothing new for Tucaković, who wrote lyrics for a number of Croatian performers during the 1980s, including many songs for Tonči Huljić's group Magazin.

Interviewed about the album in Slobodna Dalmacija in April, Andrijašević was predictably told that 'the majority of people will connect it with turbofolk because it is characterised by the sounds of the Balkan and eastern melos', and asked whether she was 'afraid to record such an album in Croatia.'

For the record, she wasn't; and with Serbian folk music so fashionable in Croatia that tickets for a small-scale Seka Aleksić concert in the village of Sedramić were - reportedly - changing hands for as much as 700 kn last week, it'll be intriguing to see whether many more Croatian performers develop closer links with what are often said to be the Serbian 'originals'.

HRF is broadcast by Nova TV this year, the station which is currently the subject of interest from the Serbian channel (and proverbial home of turbofolk) TV Pink. The channel's owner, Željko Mitrović, has himself been interviewed in Večernji list on his transnational ambitions for the channel:

'It's no longer possible at all to establish a regional character for programming and tele-bridges without information from Zagreb. It seems to us that the entertainment content which would be produced there would be very significant, even if we do not establish a media system in Croatia in the near future.'

Mitrović is nonetheless optimistic about a Nova TV takeover, pointing out the disappointing financial performance of its owner Central European Media Enterprises (which continues to deny any interest in selling the station).

Asked, again, about TV Pink's association with turbofolk, Mitrović stresses that the station's programming has 'evolved so much in its 12-year life that it can be compared with the best-quality American and European programming', that only 5 hours of a possible 168 are devoted to folk music on the Serbian channel today, but that the target audience for 'that sort of programming' ranges from 30% to 70% in various states.

The Croatian media and blogosphere (not least the turbofolk and antiturbofolk blogs) will likely make their own assessment of where the domestic audience falls on a spectrum like that.