site.btaBNR Director General Warns of Growing Challenges for Public Service Media amid Digital Competition, Shifting Audience Habits

Speaking at the opening of the first-ever Sofia-hosted European Broadcasting Union Media Summit, Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) Director General Milen Mitev said that public service media are a living organism whose pulse beats in harmony with that of society. The 2026 edition of the forum in the Bulgarian capital gathered 150 delegates from 47 media organizations across Europe.

Milen Mitev said Sofia, one of Europe’s oldest cities with a long tradition of diversity, reflects the role of public service media, which preserves collective memory and gains resilience from their legacy, but this also slows their ability to adapt.

He cited a European Parliament study showing that higher trust in public media news is linked to greater public satisfaction with how democracy functions.

The BNR Director General outlined three key challenges. In his words, the first major challenge comes from the large online platforms, which are increasingly becoming competitors to public service media. Second, the changing audience habits – over the past five years, daily radio listening has dropped by 13 minutes (17 minutes among young people), while in 2024, young audiences spent on average 2 hours 49 minutes on social media versus less than an hour listening to the radio. Finally, Mitev underscored financial pressure – at a time when investment is needed to address these shifts, public media across Europe face unprecedented budget constraints.