Media Ownership
Media outlets in Montenegro are mostly privately owned, with the exception of the National Public Broadcaster RTCG, local public broadcasters, and several non-profit media, which by law do not have owners.
The most influential commercial media in Montenegro are owned or controlled by foreign owners. Those are often heavily involved in other businesses like telecommunications, advertising, banking, gambling, hospitality industry, in Montenegro, the region, and beyond.
Since Montenegro does not have a publicly available audience measurement system, it is impossible to calculate audience concentration. For television, there is a system in place - Telekom Crna Gore, together with Ipsos and Nielsen, measures the Television audience through the system called Ariana; however, that is proprietary information that is not accessible to the public. For other media formats, audience measurement systems do not exist. Therefore, the risk of concentration is very high.
When it comes to print, out of three daily newspapers, two are majorly foreign-owned. Most of the shares of Daily Vijesti are owned by the United Group and indirectly by Serbian businessman Dragan Šolak, while in the case of Pobjeda, this daily is completely owned by the Greek businessman Petros Stathis. Daily Dan is owned by local owners – Miladen Milutinović and the family of the assassinated founder and editor-in-chief of Dan Duško Jovanović.
The majority of the most influential televisions, those holding a national frequency licence, are also foreign owned. Televizija Vijesti is majorly owned by United Group and indirectly by Dragan Šolak, while they at the same time completely own TV Nova M. Prva TV is owned by Kopernikus Corporation from Cyprus, which is owned by a Serbian businessman, Srđan Milovanović, whose main media business is in Serbia. Adria TV was owned by a Serbian businessman, Bratislav Stojiljković, who stepped down in 2023. There is no publicly available information on new owners.
A similar case is with the most-read online media. Portal Vijesti, just like the daily, is majorly owned by United Group and Serbian businessman Dragan Šolak, while CDM is owned by the Greek businessman Petros Stathis. Portal Borba is owned by one of the new owners of the Adria TV, for whom there is no publicly available information, while Portal Analitika is also owned by Petros Stathis.
In the area of commercial radio stations, which are not registered as musical, the largest coverage has Radio S, which is owned by Serbian businesspeople Bogdan Todorović and Anđelković Family, and is part of the S Radio group, which is broadcasting in Serbia and the Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is followed by radio D Plus, which is locally owned and affiliated with Dan Media Group, and Elmag radio, also locally owned and controlled by Orhan Hodžić, a Montenegrin businessman who is predominantly operating in the air transportation business. The next is a non-profit radio Svetigora, controlled by the Serbian Orthodox Church, followed by Antena M radio, which is majorly owned by Montenegrin journalist Darko Šuković, while minority shares are kept by one of the local owners of Vijesti – Miodrag Perović.
