Post-Soviet Media Law & Policy Newsletter

Issue 22     Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law     October 19, 1995

Pen-Wielding Yeltsin Decrees Abolition of Ostankino,
Proposes Continued Restructuring of National TV Companies,
Orders End to Disruption of State Media Transmissions

    In a set of decrees that some called pre-election censorship and others viewed as fulfillment of hopes for greater economic security for the media, Boris Yeltsin continued to change the face of state-controlled television in the Russian Federation. 

    Under a decree signed on October 6, Yeltsin defined those benefits of the select program services called “all Russian media organizations.” These will include Russian Public Television, ORT which operates the main TV channel;  the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Corporation VGTRK, which operates the Russia TV channel and Radio Russia; St Petersburg Fifth TV Channel operated by the St Petersburg municipality;  as well as radio stations Mayak, Radio-1 and Yunost-Youth Channel both operated by the Ostankino company.

    According to the decree no less than 51 per cent of shares in the joint-stock companies being formed for these media organizations should be federal property. Furthermore, Ostankino, the already drained shell of its former self, would be abolished.

    These program services will also be exempt from the duty to sell part of their hard currency receipts to the state, provided these funds are channelled for the development for the material and technical base of these media. That proposal has been long in the works as part of a package to strengthen the economic basis of these services. 

    In another decree signed the same day, Yeltsin signed a decree designed to put a stop to “unsanctioned disruption” of broadcasts of the all-Russian TV and radio broadcasting organizations listed above on the Russian territory.

    An NTV report on October 10 on the decrees said that its “official aim was said to be that of making state support of the electronic mass media more effective,” and at the same time the decision was made “to complete the long, drawn out structural transformation of the first channel.” Approval was received for the government’s persistent proposal to eliminate the Ostankino television and radio company. 

    The NTV program contained an interview with the chairman of the Ostankino public council, Igor Yakovenko. A member of the Duma Information Policy and Communications Committee, Yakovenko has, according to the report, “no intention of laying down his arms, and is bent on using all available methods to fight against Ostankino being swallowed up by Russian Public Television.”  

    Yakovenko said that the “so-called Russian Public Television (ORT) actually has absolutely nothing to do with the public,” and has “essentially turned out to be in the hands of a narrow commercial political grouping.” He contended that ORT is erasing virtually everything creative from the first channel. In commenting on schedule changes (see p. 3 of this issue),  Yakovenko said “Opinions can differ over Sergey Dorenko’s “Versions” , opinions can differ very substantially over Solzhenitsyn’s programs, but it is clear that everything creative, everything which is not just run of the mill, is being taken off the first channel.”

    “The destruction of Ostankino, therefore, has an obvious and pronounced political purpose. It was important to get rid of competitors. And in fact, of course, they did not get their way, because the first channel’s popularity is plummeting at the moment . . . .” 

Power Cutoff 

    Yeltsin acted against the background of widespread blackouts or threatened blackouts of ORT and other transmissions in Russia. Since the middle of September, radio and TV broadcasts from Moscow have been disrupted, mainly but not entirely in the Russian Far East, as transmitting stations have had their power supplies disconnected over unpaid electricity bills.

    Whether the decree will be sufficient to end the crisis in signal distribution, given the outstanding debts to transmission companies, is open to question.

    “Technically speaking, our entire broadcasting industry could grind to a halt at any moment -electricity suppliers need only switch off some of our transmitters,” Valentin Lazutkin, chairman of the Russian Federal Television and Radio Broadcasting Service, said in a September 25 radio interview on Ekho Moskvy, commenting on the situation regarding the possible suspension of television and radio broadcasting to the Russian Far East from the centre of Russia. “No payments have been made for a long time, and the arrears are huge.” 

    “These debts cannot be forgiven’, we have to be realistic,” Lazutkin said. “A power generating company is a creditor of a communications company, and supplies it with the electricity required for the transmissions. So, debts must be paid.”  

    “Forget the word ministry,’” Lazutkin said. “We’re in the market now, where companies owe money to one another, and the Ministry of Communications is just a regulatory body.”  

    Lazutkin said that “this issue was raised with a vengeance at a government meeting in the summer of 1995. There is a strict protocol, and instructions have been issued to the Finance Ministry and all government departments involved in the issue of non-payment, to pay off the debts, including last year’s debts.”  

    “However, the Finance Ministry cannot pay off all the debts in one go,” Lazutkin said. “By the end of 1995, this year’s debts will have only just been paid off, and last year’s are out of the question.”  

    “There is only one solution -to squeeze money out of the budget,” Lazutkin stressed. “Today, market structures are incapable of ensuring the normal functioning of the existing television and radio networks.”  

    According to Deputy Communications Minister Mikhail Yelizarov, government financing of the state TV and radio broadcasting companies covers the cost of only five or six hours of transmissions a day.

    In a speech on 26 September to communications workers, he said that the residue of budget allocations for state TV and radio broadcasting companies made up about 30 per cent of what was needed to maintain the current level of transmissions at 15 to 18 hours a day.

    In a 26 September report, the Russian Television quoted the communications workers strategy to deal with the non-payments crisis. “The approach of the elections has granted the representatives of the strategic sector -which communications are -the opportunity to use in their dispute with the government the strongest card -blackmail.” 

    The report added that communications workers had threatened to stop providing technical backup for the elections if their demands were not met.  Local radio and TV transmitting center have threatened to disrupt the automatic switching of radio and TV programs in the future.

    The workers’ report added that salary arrears for communications workers amounted to 70bn rubles and the communications enterprises in turn owed the power companies over 130bn rubles. The debts of state TV companies to the Ministry of Communications for the distribution of radio and TV programs amounted to 613bn rubles, including 286bn for the year 1994. Prime Minister Chernomyrdin’s repeated orders to repay these debts had remained completely unfulfilled.

    Moreover, the report said, communications workers in a number of areas were threatening not only to disconnect transmissions on 1st October but “to wreck the elections altogether.”

    Yelizarov said: “Today the state companies are in such debts that unless the Ministry of Finance takes urgent measures the radio and TV transmission network will not be ready for the elections. On the contrary it will close down.”

    For example, on 20 September, by order of the director of northern electricity networks, the power was completely switched off at the Komsomolsk radio center which provides Russia’s Radio Russia , Mayak and other programs to Khabarovsk Territory and the Far East. An ITAR-TASS correspondent was told by Mikhail Yelizarov, deputy federal minister of communications, that “until debts are cleared electricity supplies to the Selizharovo radio and television station in Tver region have been curtailed.” A third of the region’s population was denied the opportunity to watch television programs and listen to the radio.  

    ITAR-TASS news agency reported from Vladivostok, on September 25 that “an informational blockade is looming over the Maritime Territory of the Russian Far East. It may be left without any television or radio broadcasts from central Russia.  

    The Rosenergo joint-stock company, which supplies electric power for this purpose, threatened to cut off electricity supply to the major broadcasting and television centers of the Russian Ministry for Communications in the Maritime Territory.

    Maritime Territorial Governor Yevgeniy Nazdratenko addressed an urgent letter to the Russian government asking it to prevent the plans to cut off federal radio and television transmissions to the Far East,  He claimed that “there will be social tension in the territory and the current elections campaign will be influenced most negatively if the relaying of their programs is stopped . . . .”  

    In late September, a report from Sakhalin island by Russian Public TV said that about two million television viewers in Chukotka, Kamchatka, Magadan, Sakhalin and the Kuriles were in an information blockade. The Komsomolsk-na-Amure radio and TV transmitting center, which transmits channel one and two of central TV ORT and the Russia TV channel through the Orbita-1 system, had its power supplies disconnected by order of the directors of Khabarovskenergo Khabarovsk power corporation.

    According to the report, “people are bewildered as to why the residents of the most remote regions of Russia should suffer when they have paid for the electricity they have used and for the use of their TV sets. The people of the Far East only receive their news via the central TV programs. Newspapers, for instance in the Kuriles, are read a month after publication.” 

    Only after Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin signed the document banning the disconnection of electricity supplies to facilities designated as being of military and strategic importance did the Khabarovsk power company throw the switch to restore transmission.

    In a related, but familiar story, the amount of broadcasting by Russian television channels in Kazastan has been cut sharply.

    The broadcasts of ORT Russian Public Television have been reduced to eight and a half hours per day. The daily broadcasts of Russia TV programs have been reduced from 15 to five hours. The RIA-Novosti agency was told at the satellite, television and radio broadcasting department of the national joint-stock company Kaztelekom that this is linked to financial difficulties and is being done out of necessity.

    Rebroadcasting Russian television and radio programs costs Kazakstan 25m dollars annually. The Kazak telecommunications department is allowing for the possibility of Russian television broadcasting to the republic being restored to its former amount from the beginning of next year, but only if Russia will pay at least part of the cost.