Audience and independent regulatory agency's attitudes towards reality programs in Serbia

A case study of Dvor (Palace)

Dejan, Pralica

Kultura

133

306

319

0023-5164

10.5937/kultura1133306P

http://scindeks.ceon.rs/article.aspx?query=ISSID%26and%269813&page=0&sor...

2011-2021/06/18/10:10:25

According to the official research data of the AGB Nielsen (April, 2010) people in Serbia spend more time watching TV than any other nation in the world. Reality shows are among the most popular programs on televisions with national frequency. While most of these programs are franchises, RTV Pink, the most popular commercial television in Serbia, offered the audience in the region a reality show of its own called Dvor (The Palace). Although the reality programs have been broadcasted in Serbia since 2005 (Veliki brat, Operacija trijumf, Survivor, Farma, Parovi, 48 sati svadba, Menjam ženu, Ja imam talenat, Radna akcija, Domaćine, oženi se, Paklena kuhinja, Vreme je za bebe, Maldivi), the controversial reactions of the public and media regulatory bodies culminated during the broadcasting of Dvor. The aim of this paper is to find out why physical violence and explicite hate speach in Dvor provoked more reactions of the audience (approval and disapproval alike), print media (detailed daily reports of what happened in the program) and media experts and independent regulatory bodies than similar incidents in other reality shows. The general hypothesis is that Dvor was so popular because of its share in Pink's program (more than 10 hours a day), as well as the fact that daily newspapers and magazines gave detailed reports of the events and participants of the show. The first particular hypothesis is that Dvor attracted great interest in the audience, but also in the media, simply because celebrities were the participants of the show. The second particular hypothesis is that the reactions and conclusions of the independent regulatory body - Republic Broadcasting Agency - after the incidents in this program, did not meet the expectations of media experts. The corpus of the study contains the selected fragments from the first (Ulazak) and last (Finale) episodes of the program, the situations in which physical violence and hate speech appeared, as well as the reactions of media experts in daily newspapers and magazines and the audience's comments on the Internet forums and social networks.