Konstantin Kamenarov is the New Director General of the Public Broadcaster BNT

Konstantin Kamenarov is the new Director General of the Bulgarian National Television (BNT). On 23^rd of August, he was elected after receiving 4 out of 5 votes from the members of the Council for Electronic Media (CEM). Bettina Zhoteva, Rosita Elenova, Maria Stoyanova and CEM Chairperson Sofia Vladimirova voted in favour.

Over the past two days, six candidates presented their management concepts to the media regulator and answered questions from CEM members.

The Council for Electronic Media described the competition for BNT Director General as an opportunity for a meaningful dialogue on the future of the public service broadcaster. Konstantin Kamenarov's readiness to take up the urgent tasks ahead of BNT, to achieve higher quality of the TV production and to attract additional funding impressed the members of the Council for Electronic Media.

In his first interview on 23rd of August, the newly elected Director General, Konstantin Kamenarov, said he was honoured to return to the Bulgarian National Television and urged all public broadcaster’s employees to be calm and proud of their work.

He has said he takes pride on his return to BNT and this pride is due to the good work of the people who work in BNT.

"I count, of course, on Mrs. Ankova, to whom I thank very much for all those years she was Director General and managed to preserve and build upon and make the television as it is today - a dignified institution and an address that everyone believes in," Kamenarov said.

As regards Bulgaria's rotating presidency of the EU and the responsible task of the BNT on reporting and providing information and picture for the whole of Europe, the new Director General expressed confidence that the public service broadcaster and its team would fulfill the task brialiantly.

In the presentation of his concept on 22^nd of August, Konstantin Kamenarov said it was based on realistic and achievable ideas within conservative funding. He pointed out that the budget currently available to the public service broadcaster was extremely insufficient and gave an example that it was twice as big as 15 years ago.

According to Kamenarov, news and current affairs are the backbone of the public service broadcaster that has proven itself over time and "Worldwide and in Bulgaria" news programme has become an undisputed leader on the television market. But in order not to remain a "lonely island", as he described it, programming is very important for BNT in order to become a real alternative to commercial TV stations.

According to him, BNT should focus its entire technical and human resources on making products of increasingly better quality.

As regards marketing, Kamenarov said that a unit should be set up to work towards additional funding, which can be done by attracting funds from European programmes. He did not rule out the possibility of attracting additional funds through project work together with large corporations, which he believes will not in any way interfere with the fulfillment of the public mission and function of BNT.

He placed a very high emphasis on packaging because he thinks that is what sells the TV product nowadays.

According to Kamenarov, there should be one main, polythematic channel and BNT1 should remain as such and there should be a bunch of other channels. BNT2 will focus on culture and education, he added.

The philosophy of decision-making in the production of products by BNT should be changed, he said and thus it is necessary to create a “Bible of golden rules” that apply to all.