Television Cultures of Socialist Yugoslavia

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to compare television cultures of Yugoslav republics during socialism. The paper is drawing on the recent comparative studies of socialist television in South and East Europe (Perško et al. 2021; Mihelj and Huxtable 2018; Imre 2016). Following the categories developed by Mihelj and Huxtable (2018) and Imre (2016), Yugoslav television cultures are here analysed in terms of a) generic composition and share of program modes, b) the level of transnationalism, c) the level of openness of television to social critique (semi-publicness), c) focus of television on private life (privatization), d) the gendering patterns, e) temporal orientation, f) characteristics of factual, humorous and history genres. Analysis is based on the data collected for the recently published book by Peruško, Vozab and Čuvalo (2021) and original content analysis of the JRT 79 Television Programme booklet, with a short description and basic info about the program that was shared within the JRT network. The result discerns differences between republic televisions (especially TV Ljubljana, TV Zagreb and TV Novi Sad) in program development toward neo-television, such as the differences in transnational orientation, temporal orientation, gendering patterns.