   
|
|
TV
STATIONS
I.
VGTRK reform detailed.
The process of reforming state television, which was
undertaken a year ago under an edict of the president of
Russia, seems to be entering the home stretch. [On
27th April] , Channel 2 [Russia TV channel] will
officially be transformed into the Federal State Unitary
Enterprise Television Channel Rossiya. The RTR
[Russian Television and Radio, part of All-Russia State
TV and Radio Company] aside, all the structures included
in the VGTRK [All-Russia State Television and Radio
Company] holding will undergo changes in line with the
law. Today there are over 100 of them, and all of
them will receive the status of independent legal
entities. . . .
However, the All-Russia State Television and Radio
Company, the holder of the broadcasting licence, will
still retain the functions of a primary contractor and
manager. . .
According to new staff allocations, the state channel
will employ 650 people, which is almost half the
company’s current staffing. . . .
According to the plan, only two creative associations
will remain: special projects (although broadcasts
of all sorts may be included here if necessary) and
children’s or youth programming. . . .
The equipment of the television centre in Shabolovka
Street will now be granted for use to outside producers
as a form of payment (full or partial) for programme
production.
By comparison: ORT [Public Russian Television]
spends around 7m dollars a month on production and
purchase of programmes, because it is dependent on
producers. Channel 2 spends at least a third of
that amount—around 2m dollars. . . .
All external producers will have offices in Shabolovka
Street. The programme content, topics and invited
guests will be controlled by the Main Editorial Office of
the Electronic Mass Media, Russian Television. That
is what the new subdepartment of the VGTRK management
company is called. It is curious that its editorial
director is also Aleksandr Akopov [Akopov is
director-general of Russia TV channel]. . . .
At present, the Federal State Unitary Enterprise VGTRK is
the largest media-holding company in Russia. What
is a unitary enterprise?
A unitary enterprise is considered to be a commercial
organization which has not been granted the right to own
the property secured for it by its owner. The
property of a unitary enterprise is indivisible and
cannot be distributed via investments (shares, stakes),
including among the workers of the enterprise.
Only state and municipal enterprises may be formed as
unitary enterprises.
‘Vremya
MN’ web site, Moscow, April 27, 1999
II.
Moscow mayor set to take over TV Centre.
By 15th May, Oleg Tolkachev and Sergey Yastrzhembskiy,
deputy prime ministers of the Moscow government, along
with TV Centre Director Vladimir Yevtushenkov, are
supposed to “take measures and draft a decree”
on transforming the television company from a public
joint-stock company into a state-owned joint-stock
company.
By the same date, Yastrzhembskiy has been instructed to
formulate a political strategy of the third channel
conforming to the position of [Moscow mayor] Yuriy
Luzhkov’s Fatherland movement. The
former presidential press secretary has been made
responsible for the management of the TV Centre by his
current chief—the mayor of the capital.
Your ‘Izvestiya’ correspondent has learnt about
all this from the minutes of a meeting held by
Luzhkov. It discussed issues relating to the
improvement of the television company’s operation as
mapped out in the documents that are being circulated
“for official use only” at the mayor’s
office. And from conversations with sources at the
Moscow government, it has emerged that the chief of the
Media-Most holding company, Vladimir Gusinskiy, is
displaying a strategic interest in TV Centre.
Considering that Sergey Yastrzhembskiy is called
Gusinskiy’s man, the information does not seem to be
groundless.
‘Izvestiya,’
Moscow, April 23, 1999
III.
ORT hopes to pay off part of its debt.
Russian Public TV [ORT] director-general Igor
Shabdurasulov is pleased with [the 20th April] decision
by the Moscow court of arbitration to postpone until 10th
June 1999 the hearing of the insolvency case against the
Russian Public TV joint-stock company.
“The application [to postpone the hearing] was made
by ORT, so we are naturally pleased that it was accepted
and that the court postponed the hearing until
June,” Igor Shabdurasulov has told
ITAR-TASS. In the intervening period, he
noted, “we hope to resolve the issue of repaying our
debts, or at least the debts we owed when the lawsuit was
brought against us.”
The ORT director-general recalled that the bulk of the
company’s debt to its creditors had already been
repaid, thanks in part to a 100m-dollar state loan.
ORT has received four instalments of the loan since
January 1999. The fifth and final instalment is to
be disbursed on 29th April.
“At the same time, one should bear in mind that we
shall not be able to repay all the debts owed by the
company,” Igor Shabdurasulov noted. “Even
though we have cut the TV company’s expenses by 40
per cent compared with the pre-crisis period [i.e. before
August 1998], there has also been a drop in revenues from
commercial enterprises, including those from
advertising,” he explained. The
director-general said current revenue could not offset
expenditure on the company’s day-to-day
operation. Moreover, Shabdurasulov added, one also
has to take into account increased charges for
communication services.
ITAR-TASS
news agency (World Service), Moscow, April 20, 1999
IV.
Russia cancels mogul arrest warrant.
Prosecutors cancelled an arrest warrant for business
tycoon Boris Berezovsky [on 14th April] because he
promised to return to Russia to face inquiries on money
laundering charges, news reports said.
Berezovsky said he plans to fight charges that he was
behind the illegal transfer of $250 million from Aeroflot
to the Swiss company, Andava. He was in France when
a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Berezovsky, who is believed to have close ties to
President Yeltsin, has said the charges against him are
part of a political vendetta and claimed Prime Minister
Primakov conjured up the charges to disgrace him.
Berezovsky has been losing clout in a prolonged battle
with Primakov. The turf war apparently led to
Berezovsky’s ouster as the executive secretary of an
alliance of former Soviet republics.
Many Russian analysts suggested that the warrant for
Berezovsky’s arrest was an attempt to keep the mogul
from returning home and testifying against senior
government officials who allegedly had a stake in his
business deals.
EJC
Media News, April 15, 1999
V.
Berezovskiy arrest warrant linked to ORT battle.
The information wars between media empires have faded
into the past, and it seems that the media empires
themselves are fading into the past. Last week saw
the opening of the hunting season for the owners of
factories, newspapers and ships, that is, the
oligarchs.
The Prosecutor-General’s Office issued arrest
warrants for two former oligarchs: Boris
Berezovskiy and Aleksandr Smolenskiy.
Berezovskiy, at a Paris news conference, said his
difficulties were mainly due to the struggle for Russian
Public TV.
[Correspondent]
A year ago, the oligarchs’ situation seemed
permanent and their media empires built for centuries
ahead. But there would be practically no place for
the state if Russia’s information space was divided
like that, and the authorities could not of course agree
to that.
[Aleksandr
Kortunov, president of Moscow Public Science Foundation]
I think the government could lose control over the
regions, control over the electorate, but the media are
the one thing that the government, and the presidential
administration, let’s not forget, still influence
fairly seriously.
[Correspondent]
Maybe it is pure coincidence, but both Berezovskiy and
Smolenskiy were very active in privatizing Russian Public
TV. Berezovskiy has until very recently been
considered essentially Russian Public TV’s
owner. The recent information assault on Prime
Minister [Yevgeniy] Primakov on Channel One has also been
linked exclusively to Berezovskiy.
Now the ex-CIS executive secretary [Berezovskiy] is
answering accusations against him from the luxurious
Hotel Crillon in Paris. He says everything
happening to him is also linked to the battle for control
of the media. . . .
Berezovskiy’s fate remains unclear for the moment,
but all things considered the main bastion of his media
empire has already fallen and others are on the verge of
surrender.
Only a month ago, ‘Nezavisimaya Gazeta’
[newspaper controlled by Berezovskiy] was in the vanguard
of the information assault against the government, but
now it is reacting surprisingly neutrally to the latest
scandal involving Berezovskiy.
[Vitaliy
Tretyakov, editor in chief of ‘Nezavisimaya
Gazeta’]
The disappearance from the political arena of the
oligarchy that owns the media is not a loss that will
lead to the loss of freedom of the press. The media
will remain one way or another.
[Correspondent]
Tretyakov said the main thing is to ensure the media
don’t return to total state control, but he said
this is not a threat, at least in the near future.
Ren TV,
Moscow, April 11, 1999
VI.
NTV breaks the news on ethnic cleansing.
Russian television news began coverage of ethnic
cleansing in Kosova on 4 April, when NTV’s
“Itogi” showed pictures of Kosovar Albanians
being forced from their homes by Yugoslav soldiers.
In addition, “Itogi’s” anchorman Yevgenii
Kiselev disclosed that the reports of Russian journalists
in Serbia were subjected to military censorship.
NTV chief editor Vladimir Kulistikov explained the shift
by pointing to simple economics, telling the “Moscow
Times” on 6 April that the network has finally found
the money to send its ace reporter, Pavel Lobkov, to
Macedonia to get a first-hand report from ethnic-Albanian
refugees. Analysts expect the rest of Russia’s
TV networks to follow NTV’s lead, and Yevgenii Volk
of the Heritage Foundation told the daily that the change
in media coverage was an indication that the Russian
government would eventually soften its stance against
NATO.—JAC
RFE/RL
Newsline, April 6, 1999
VII.
Government tightens financial grip on ORT.
It was announced at a session of the collegium of state
representatives to ORT [Russian Public Television] that
the government intended to control the financial
activities of the Russian Public Television joint-stock
company. The weakening of Boris Berezovskiy’s
leverage on the first channel remains the main objective
of the White House. Viktoriya Arutyunova and
Natalya Samoylova have details. . . .
Right before the session, ORT General Director Igor
Shabdurasulov received a letter from Mikhail
Seslavinskiy, chairman of the Federal Service for
Television and Radio Broadcasting, which explained that
the ORT, which had gone into receivership, had no right
to set up any structures without coordination with all
the company shareholders. . . . The collegium
resolved that ORT had no right to sign an agreement for
exclusive advertising services with a company that has
not been approved by all the shareholders of the first
channel. . . .
The ORT leadership currently insists that the
company’s financial situation is bad and that
Vneshekonombank’s credit [to the tune of 100m
dollars] cannot be repaid within a year. . . .
There is no surplus today, for ORT’s expenditure is
approximately twice as high as what it receives from
commercials. If the current economic situation does
not fundamentally change, ORT’s chances of freeing
itself from the noose of its debts and of starting to
receive tangible profits will progressively worsen.
Having said that, the upcoming elections and the likely
profits as a result are the main cause of the current
heightened attention to ORT’ s finances.
Whoever is able to achieve maximum leverage on the
channel will play the first fiddle in media policy. . .
.
At this point the government has only one real
possibility of controlling the ORT. If the
television channel violates the rules of the game set up
by the White House, the government may deprive Russian
Public Television of its broadcasting licence. To
do so, however, the government will have to introduce
substantial amendments to the legislation.
Otherwise it will be unable to strip ORT of its licence,
which has been extended till the end of the year
2000.
‘Kommersant,’ Moscow, March
25, 1999
|
