ERNO
Eurovision News Exchange for the South East Europe

ERNO (Eurovision News Exchange for the South East Europe) network was created in November 2000 as the only exchange platform for Public broadcasters in the SEE region out of the need for the regional television news desks to receive information and fresh picture from the neighbouring countries, re-establish cooperation between television companies after political tensions and conflicts and facilitate the transitional period for the local media. It has been the most successful bridge connecting the divided regional media environment in the last 11 years managing to create a successful network of the EVN news desks in the regional Public TV Stations.

ERNO Coordination Office is based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Every day Public Broadcasters in the Southeast Europe (SEE) send and receive, via Eurovision satellite, news items and pictures from and for their specific needs through the ERNO news exchange. The „South Eastern European Window - ERNO“ is open daily 16:25 - 16:40 CET in the Eurovision satellite for the participating SEE countries to exchange their news items.
About 13 100  items have been exchanged in ERNO in period from November 2000 to December 2011.
Content of the exchanged material in the ERNO varies significantly from the politically related stories like important state meetings, conferences and visits, culture events like film / theatre festivals, exhibitions and concerts to feature stories that portray life and customs in the region making  South-East Europe an important source of the stories in the EBU system.

ERNO Coordination Office, in cooperation with international donors, including the European Commission, Finnish Foreign Ministry and UNESCO has also organized numerous trainings, meetings, thematic productions and co-productions.

ERNO has managed to build a well functioning infrastructure with the right mix of skilled professionals whose cooperation has proved to be successful not only in daily news exchange, but also in co-production of investigative documentary issues including:

• Illegal trafficking of women in the Balkans
• environmental hazards in the SEE region
• life of the young people in the region
• HIV / AIDS threats
• human rights in the Balkans
• EU integrations of the Western Balkans countries
• cultural heritage in Southeast Europe

ERNO has also launched a network of documentary programs’ producers and editors.
-1st meeting of the new network members was held in Croatia, June 2009.
-2nd meeting was held on October 28-31, 2010, in Sofia, Bulgaria with mapping out of plans for enhanced cooperation among ERNO members and the agreement on the        possible co-productions.
-3 rounds of documentaries exchange have been completed with rather diverse topics of documentaries including culture, history, ecology, social and even current affairs.

ERNO network is a part of Global program exchange with global partners: Nordvision (network of Northern European PSBs), TAL (network of PSBs from Latin America) and RAI Educational.

Main achievements in 11 years:

• Strong network of media professionals from Public Broadcasters from the region of SEE
• Reinforced cooperation tradition of cooperation between the public broadcasters in the region, improved professionalism of TV news staff and development the journalist approach and quality of the new stories and bulletins
• Development of ERNO from the international donors’ pilot project to the self-sustainable institution
• Increased free flow of information between the countries in the SEE region as well as between the SEE region and other parts of Europe

Last update December 2011