10 years of news on Top Channel

Bledar Zaganjori, the head of the news department, declared:

“I remember the first meeting with Dritan Hoxha, when we were informed about the plan for opening a TV station. We were still very young and it seemed a game, as Dritan Hoxha explained us his plans. I remember him saying ‘We must do it, because I have never left something halfway, and it must be the best since the beginning, because I have never accepted to be second’.

“And after a short time, Top Channel became the first. We followed Tani’s advises, who said that he had everything in his mind. And we’re talking about a time when we still didn’t have the studios, we had just started to decide for the premises”, Zaganjori declared.

The Chief Editor of the news, Mentor Kikia, was also one of the first people who worked for the creation of what became the most successful television in the country. One of the biggest revolutions made by Top Channel, was the technological one.

“The graphics were a technical revolution. The other media were still in an amateur phase, with backward technology. Our graphics set new standards, founded models that were followed by others. We were innovators since the first day and until now, with the high definition technology”, Kikia declared.

“We brought a different type of news, created new working relation standards, because the media was the darkest sector of the time. We created a new payment standard, and the others were obliged to follow, due to the competition.

“Graphics were part of the work of a very good staff that Dritan Hoxha knew how to choose, because he knew the technique very well. He was more than the owner that is paying or that is making a profit. He was the idea, the man that stood behind every new program that was born. He was a newly graduated engineer who could correct even professional engineers. Dritan Hoxha was a maniac for every element of the scene, every new graphic spot or even color that appeared on the screen. In this aspect, no one could put something on the screen without his approval”.

Monika Shoshori Stafa, one of the news anchors that can be identified with Top Channel’s screen since the first news edition, remembers the big gap that she found after going from another media to Top Channel.

“Many things were totally different, starting from details such as the makeup, and that I was received by very good people. I was lucky, because such a team cannot be found today, despite the talent and the working desire that one might have. I had just left a gloomy ambiance from TV Arberia, and my friends invited me to work with them in a new television. I don’t know why I didn’t become skeptic and I accepted, because at that time I worked for a national TV. However, we were trusted to realize a dream here. Dritan Hoxha wanted everything perfect, and he surprised us with his mania for not neglecting any detail. We told us that we had to be perfect from the first second on air, to stun the Albanians since the beginning.”

Enkelejd Llanaj, today chief editor of economic news, says that the biggest advantage of Top Channel was that journalists scrutinized any news very thoroughly and until the end.

“This is what Dritan Hoxha requested from us. He wanted us to break the auto-censure barriers. Then it was the professionalism what set the limits”.

Llanaj remembers that he has made the first news report, but the entire staff was there.

“This was our second advantage. Everyone cooperated. It didn’t matter what a journalist covered, because everyone supplied each other with help, regardless of their duties. Top Channel was the first TV that created news that were completely dedicated to the economy, starting with the video editors, the speakers and journalists. On the first report that I made, you can hear even today the voice of my first colleague, Vilma Bace, speaker and journalist of economic news.”

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