It is enough to say „Daško & Mlađa“ in Serbia, and the people will start smiling. The witty duo of radio hosts quickly became a brand on the B92 radio, then got transferred to O-Radio in Novi Sad… and got sacked because of the „expired contract“.
Text: Žikica Milošević
Or they were acquitted because of… too sharp a tongue? We talked with them about it all and they explained all their future plans.
Many people who deeply disliked getting up early, and yet they were waking up at 6AM just to listen to you, even if they did not agree with your attitudes. And yet you got sacked?
Daško: Well, we were quite popular and we even had 3 TV links during the morning, and then, they started cutting us. For the next two months after Milica Kravić was transferred to the radio, we got only one TV link. It was really popular, but the new RTV management does not care for the size of the audience. Just like on the commercial stations everything is ridiculously pushed to the other extreme – we will slaughter people live if there are viewers, sort of saying – here they are in the opposite extreme – they simply don’t care. Everything has to be tamed and RTV has to be a place where you hire your people, and the programme… it can be broadcast but not necessarily so.
Mlađa: Basically, the new management just do not care the quality of the program being broadcast, it shows the fact that they replaced the best staff and their places is occupied by cronies. Such public service becomes a tool for the dissemination of similar information.
Archibald Reiss said that the real friend told you the truth. Why is the voice of the critics so disliked here, when it can be constructive corrective sign?
Daško:
Real question! The ruling man is the person who gets critics as a personal insult. He is intelligent but vane, but all around him are extremely unsophisticated and uncultured arrogant people. „Clerks“. Many dictators were justified in a way „He’s not that bad, it is about the people who surround him“. But I think that every power in Serbia from 1990 functions according to the principle „Take money and run“.
Mlađa: “Listen, Serbs!” by Archibald Reiss is to be learned by heart and repeated like a mantra. To replace i.e, Načertanije, the Bible and the Constitution. Perhaps we then can move on.
Talking about Daško & Mlađa, you made a brand from B92 to O-Radio, which successfully took over all the talented people from all around. And it started to crumble down.
Daško: It is not crumbling down. They destroy it with a hammer. During one night. They needed years to take over the Belgrade media. And here they just did it with hammer in the head – overnight sacking of Arežina, the sole person resrponsible for the high quality of programme. „What, quality? We cannot allow it!“ – it is what they say. We made a first media decentralisation on B92. It was the programme done in Novi Sad for a Belgrade radio, broadcast in the whole Serbia. First time we were victims of „formatting“, which is lowering the radio programme to the level of „Winamp with few empty sentences“ and now we are victims of politics. O-Radio was a natural choice, we talked what we wanted and played the music we wanted. The „formatters“ have evil joy when they destroy radio-stations, like Orwell’s 1984 when they shink the dictionaries. „You will have 3 songs and love them“. Cretinisation of media all around.
Mlađa: Radio presenter in a formatted radio station has become retarded song announcer: “You have heard this, then you listen to that, the weather is nice, have a coffee with friends, and be sure to run the dog know if you notice a patrol on the road. Talk to you after four songs with a story about whether you had coffee… Brainwashing!”
You moved to podcast. Tell us about the new form.
Daško: Internet radio and podcast are basically radios, just transmitted though different media. Radio was listened through air, now through internet. No big deal. But now we are moving to self-management. Everyone who wants to be our shareholder, they can be. A Socialist experiment in capitalism. It was a crowdfunding, it worked well. We gathered $3000 in 3 days, bought computers and tools. I was surprised the people were so ready to jump in. It is that we meant to people. And this was a check of loyalty, and we passed. In November we start and we hope the people will send us money not to buy computers, but to make our living, our salaries. Our show had education, fun and information merged, and it will continue to have them, I boldly say. We don’t make a sect of followers who agree with us. We want our listeners to disagree. It is just that I don’t stand racists and fascists.
Mlađa: We are not a sect, but nevertheless we hope that our fans will one day rewrite their property and bedding to the two of us.
Does not it surprise you that you had superbig fun base and yet no one came to tell you „Guys, you are popular, and free, come to my station, I will make money on you, selling one second of ads expensively.“ The market doesn’t work?
Daško: It really proves that this is not a market economy. Everyone speaks about „,market“ but there is something above it. The pure censorship. I did not feel it until very recently with the joke about the PM. The radio which would hire us would face very unpleasant media affairs certainly. The rules change in the middle of the game. Our enemies were spreading rumours that our salary is 160k, it was 60k. They go very low. We play football and you suddenly catch the ball with your hands. Now we do everything by ourselves. We are supported by people, and this is great!
Mlađa: We are currently “hot potato in the hands” It would be great to have us on your radio, but it carries risks that no one is willing to accept. That’s why we like our grandfathers, using partisan ways to fight to get to the listeners!