A successful innovation
The chronological account of the expansionary progress of Top Media would go like this:
First there was Top Albania Radio. Then came Top Channel and finally Digitalb.
Top Albania radio’s birthday, the 14th of February, is still a popular celebration. The most loved radio of Albanians, born on the International Day of Lovers, brought them not only a wide range of music coupled with accurate and timely news, but also programs which very soon captured attention such as A song for you.
Independence, neutrality and honesty are the pillars of the kind of journalism Top Media praises, according to their website. Top Channel TV was created on July 2001. Though not recognized as a national TV, it covers almost the entire Albanian territory and through the satellite transmissions is present in Europe (Digitalb platform) and in the USA (Intelsat America 5.)
The quality of its transmissions, the reliability of its news, and especially the innovative ideas of creating programs that raise civic awareness and participation, made it soon the most followed TV channel, leaving others behind. According to a 2003 survey, Top Channel has a 50 percent share of the Albanian audience compared to the second place of 17 percent. It collaborates successfully with international news agencies such as REUTERS. As every successful business company its corporate responsibility department has a good working relationship with development agencies that work in Albania such as UNDP, UNICEF, IOM, OSBE, USAID, and the Red Cross. DigitAlb was first promoted in July of 2004 and was a novelty from the start. Within the first five months of its operations it became the first European platform to have both land and satellite transmissions simultaneously.
The national dimension
There is a very strong national dimension in the working philosophy of all Top Media. The focus on many Top Channel programs has been to reach a wide national audience and address issues that raise the attention of all the Albanian nationals wherever they maybe located. Hence the Monday evening program Shqip, has an exclusive spotlight on events and issues such as Kosovo, Macedonia, the Albanian Arberesh minority in Italy and so forth. The program Exclusive on Sunday nights also often deals with historical issues and national identity questions.
Top Albania radio through its online program availability is listened to by all Albanians possessing Internet access and distributes the Albanian new and music worldwide.
Most importantly, in a more general framework, through transmitting programs in Albanian abroad, Digitalb reaches the extensive Albanian recent Diaspora, the considerable immigrant population for which this platform is the education window of their children in order to learn Albanian and keep close contact with their native culture. Its children pre-school program has an emphasis on the learning of Albanian.
New ideas- the key to growth
One of the most popular programs in Top Channel is definitely, Fiks Fare, a satirical overview of political, economic and social problems in Albania coupled with a humorous monitoring of all Albanian media.
Behind the humor, Fiks Fare has often acted as a direct Ombudsman, bringing forward citizens concern and advocating for important changes. Fiks Fare is just one of the most obvious examples. Others include the extremely popular Sunday show Portokalli, another program with a lot of constructive irony incorporated in humor, Top Show, the most serious talk show that brings every day of the week important debates on many issues ranging from sports to politics and Top fest, the festival of Albanian contemporary music that is well-known for promoting new talents, once again form the national arena.
Just like with the example of Top Albania Radio, Top Channel’s success has been focus on innovation. The same is valid for DigitAlb, the forerunner of the very modern technology of numerical transmissions and recently of the technology innovation of cellular-TV devices.
According to the general director of DigitAlb, Alban Jaho, the philosophy of the company is base don the addressing of diverse customer tastes and need sin terms of programs and information. There are 38 channels on the land platform and 33 on the satellite one, 2 radio channels and an audio support for Top News, the most recent 24 hours news channel.
These have been designed so that all age-groups have access to their favorite kind of transmissions and the enrichment of programs continues to be top priority. Most of the programs have subtitles or sound dubbing in Albanian. The technology is cotemporary with the use of PPV, VOD, DVB-H transmission modules, the latest word in modern telecommunication.
The problematic relationship with the administration
Top Media has employed a critical attitude towards any government in power, exposing the corruption and inefficiencies despite the political affiliation of the administration. Only recently though, it is starting to feel the gratuitous pressure of power.
It has all started with a conflict about the unusually frequented and allegedly unwarranted tax authorities controls especially regarding the DigitAlb branch. According to Jaho, there is a lot of evidence proving that this tax authority checks are too exclusive to be warranted by law.
The controversial debate about the law regulating numerical transmissions, a draft that would hurt the DigitAlb platform considerably raised criticism even from Brussels. The tension is between perceptions that these measures are being taken to fight informality and those who consider all these as subtle punishment to dissenting voices.
