History
The newspaper was founded in 1996 by a group of Austria-based businessmen that included Peter Kelbel and Aleksandar Lupšić, who simultaneously bought Bratislava's Nový čas though the original newspaper had been started a year before (in 1995) and had drawn some journalists who had previously been working for Borba and Nasa Borba. At the time of his investment in Blic, Lupšić had strong ties to Milošević's wife Mira Marković and her party Yugoslav Left (JUL). The first issue of Blic appeared on September 16, 1996 thus becoming the 10th daily newspaper to be published in FR Yugoslavia at the time (the other nine being Politika, Borba, Dnevnik, Pobjeda, Narodne novine, Večernje novosti, Politika ekspres, Naša borba, and Dnevni telegraf).
Prior to that, the same group took over a Prague newspaper where they gained valuable publishing experience which encouraged them to go on further. For their Serbian operation, the owners got seasoned journalist Manojlo "Manjo" Vukotić to be the editor-in-chief.
Just like many other media operations in Serbia from the 1990s and beyond, Blic's ownership structure was murky as well. It was controlled by an entity called Blic Press d.o.o. - a limited liability company registered in Belgrade in March 1996. Blic Press' owners according to the Serbian Business Register were listed to be Milorad Perovic, a resident of Belgrade (51%) and Liechtenstein-based company named Mitsui Securities Eastern Europe Fund AG (49%) whose owners were not listed.
Starting out, Blic was a typical stripped-down tabloid with short and simple stories, as well as a lot of entertainment content. Its first issues were circulated in 50,000 copies per day with the price set at 1 dinar. It also ran a havily advertised sweepstakes with the grand prize being a Volkswagen Polo Classic car and DM30,000. As a result of the sweepstakes, the paper's circulation increased by 30% within only a couple of weeks of the first issue.
Read more about this topic: Blic (newspaper)
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