When it comes to media access, Kosovo's population is spoiled for choices. No apartment block is complete without its symmetrical rows of white satellite dishes scanning the heavens for news and entertainment. One estimate has it that 75 percent of the population has media access. BBC and MTV are just a click away.
As for local media, figures from the Temporary Media Commissioner (TMC) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, show a plethora of outlets for a population of just over 2 million. Kosovo has 86 licensed radio stations and 23 television stations. This does not include those operated by KFOR, the multinational military protection force. Four of Kosovo's radio stations reached all of the territory, while the others served local areas. Any local station can be very local in this ethnically divided U.N. protectorate. One station, Radio Gorazdevac, exists to serve a Serb enclave of the same name that has only some 800 residents.
Kosovo does not lack for newspapers and magazines either, though broadcast media are much more popular. Such a wide choice hasn't always translated into quality. That may be understandable in a region where decades of socialist state control stifled initiative as well as anything approaching balanced coverage of divergent opinion.