As a follow-up to my posting yesterday about the liquidation of TV6 in Moscow, there are wider repercessions in that TV6 served as the parent station to 156 further regional TV stations. FWers might be interested in "Putin's message to the Media" in today's New York Times:
>>>> January 24, 2002 Putin's Message to the Media By FLORIANA FOSSATO and ANNA KACHkAEVA MOSCOW The recent decision of Russia's Higher Arbitration Court to dissolve TV-6, a national television network, has been described as marking the end of large-scale independent broadcast journalism in Russia. The truth is both less and, potentially, more dramatic. Russian television has a vibrant, extensive web of local and regional TV stations; not all free speech has come from Moscow. However, the attack on the national stations may well have serious effects on regional journalism, including a return to the self-censorship that was such a noticeable feature of the Soviet decades. The 1990's saw a vicious battle for power among the men who became known simply as "oligarchs." The media tycoons Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky formed a cartel to re-elect President Boris Yeltsin in 1996, then broke down into feuding. Both have been forced by President Vladimir Putin's new elite to flee the country. Gradually and inevitably, they are losing their media empires. Last year, the gas giant Gazprom took over Mr. Gusinsky's Media MOST (a holding company that controlled the national NTV station and the regional TNT network). Many NTV journalists, who had been very critical of Mr. Putin, decamped to TV- 6. Now a major oil company, Lukoil, has succeeded in having a court agree to dissolve TV-6; the broadcast license will be auctioned off in March. Television outside of Moscow has mainly been exempted from this kind of aggressive interference, though since the Gazprom takeover there have been several incidents, notably in Lipetsk. The past decade has seen the hectic emergence of some 600 regional TV stations, increasingly professional and broad enough to become an indispensable source of information, including alternatives to the official line, for a country spread across 11 time zones. Of hundreds of regional television stations, most are not controlled by the state. According to Pavel Korchagin, a TV-6 official, the company's network included 156 regional television stations in all major Russian cities, reaching more than 80 million viewers. Most regional partners were bound to the network by contract. This means that they complemented local programming � mainly evening news and morning entertainment shows � with content from TV-6. Another 10 regional stations were majority- owned subsidiaries of TV-6. The dissolution of the parent station and the repeal of its broadcasting license will have severe effects on these affiliates, as can be seen in the experience of the TNT network, which together with its partner NTV was TV- 6's predecessor in being attacked by the government. TNT includes more than 100 regional television stations in 582 large and small cities across Russia, reaching more than 75 million people. Eleven regional stations are majority-owned by TNT. Since the April 2001 takeover of TNT's parent company by Gazprom, the relationship between the Moscow-based company and its regional partners has become increasingly strained. At the end of 2001 some 30 regional TNT affiliates appealed to Gazprom and Mr. Putin, asking to be allowed to buy themselves out of the network. Their reasons are mainly economic � poor management and dull content have led to smaller audiences, less advertising and therefore reduced income, making the stations less financially viable. But the problems are also political. Regional stations don't want their politics dictated from the Kremlin, not least because it sends a signal to more local authorities that they might pile on and intimidate TV stations themselves. Beyond that, many regional journalists may suspect that in the future it would be best to take into account the interests of political bosses and owners instead of pursuing stories on their own initiative. A recurrence of self-censorship among Russian journalists is proving to be perhaps the most destructive consequence of the events of the past 12 months, and one that will be extremely difficult to overcome. President Putin's administration could do a lot to advance Russian democracy by making sure his battles with media oligarchs don't also destroy a vigorous and varied regional system. Without some careful attention now, it could require years to be rebuilt. Floriana Fossato, former Moscow correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, is a political analyst. Anna Kachkaeva is a professor at Moscow University and training director for Internews-Russia. >>>> __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
