Sunday, June 22nd, 2003
Kremlin shuts down major private Russian TV station
MOSCOW (AP) - A Russian private television station whose critical reporting had
irritated the Kremlin was taken off the air Sunday and replaced by a state-run
sports channel.
The government explained the change by saying a financial crisis made it impossible
for TVS to broadcast its programs. Yet the shutdown of TVS - one of Russia's two
main private stations - gives the Kremlin a firmer grip on what goes out over
the nation's airwaves.
The Russian press ministry pulled the plug on TVS early Sunday morning while it
was broadcasting commercials, the Interfax news agency said.
A press release from the ministry, quoted by Interfax, said the decision was "not
an easy one." But the station's financial crisis and problems with staff and management
made further broadcasting impossible, the ministry said.
Workers at TVS were stunned.
"I learned that we were switched off while I was driving to work," news editor
Elena Korobova told NTV television news. "I was shocked."
Another news editor, Lena Vasilkova, said, "I have a feeling that a murder has
been committed. It was like a criminal chronicle, the same feelings ... pity,
desperation, hopelessness."
The editor in chief of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, Alexei Venediktov, said
the closing of TVS gives the government a virtual monopoly on broadcasting. "It's
like when all candidates are excluded from the election campaign, except for only
one," he told Interfax.
TVS was created from the ashes of two other television stations that came into
conflict with powerful companies connected to the Kremlin.
Many journalists who work for TVS' news service previously worked for NTV, Russia's
biggest private station. NTV was taken over by the government-connected natural
gas monopoly in 2001 in what critics said was an attempt to curb the station's
critical coverage.
Many prominent NTV employees moved over to TV6 in protest of the takeover, but
that station was shut down in a dispute with a shareholder, a government-connected
pension fund. TV6 journalists then formed TVS with financial backing from a group
of business executives loyal to the Kremlin.
TVS has been plagued by financial difficulties, partly as a result of infighting
among its shareholders, according to Russian media reports.
This month, Moscow's main cable company stopped transmitting TVS, claiming the
station owed it $8 million - a figure TVS disputes. Most of the capital's residents
could receive the station only via cable.