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MOSCOW - Russia's TV6 broadcasting was replaced by all-sports
news programming Tuesday, hours after authorities took TV6, the
last independent, national station, off the air.
TV6 lost its broadcast signal at midnight (2100 Monday GMT)
in the culmination of a months-long legal battle that has revived
concern about media freedom in Russia.
On Jan. 11, the station was ordered closed after a minority
shareholder, a pension fund owned by oil giant Lukoil, brought
it to court to initiate liquidation procedures for failing to
bring a profit. TV6 management maintained that the station was
on firm financial footing and that the Lukoil suit was ordered
by the government to silence the station's critical news reports.
Lukoil is minority-owned by the Russian government.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the liquidation proceedings
were purely a business dispute.
On Tuesday morning, NTV-Plus, a Russian satellite TV service,
began broadcasting its sports channel for free on Channel 6. The
company was granted temporary rights to the frequency until a
permanent broadcast license is granted, something officials have
said would happen in late March.
Last week, TV6 managers voluntarily surrendered the station's
broadcast license and announced the creation of a new corporation
- also named TV6 - which would bid for broadcast rights.
They also severed ties with Boris Berezovsky, the self-exiled
tycoon and Kremlin opponent who owns the majority of shares in
TV6.
But on Monday, TV6's general manager Yevgeny Kiselyov announced
that the managers had changed their mind, saying that only the
station's shareholders had the right to surrender the license.
He said TV6 management had surrendered the license under pressure
from Media Minister Mikhail Lesin and the Kremlin, and that it
had been told that they could stay on the air if TV6 dropped Berezovsky.
Shortly after Kiselyov's announcement, bailiffs arrived at the
Media Ministry demanding that TV6's old parent company be stripped
of its license in line with the court order and be forbidden from
conducting any financial operations.
Leading Russian liberals condemned the TV6 closure as a violation
of the public's right to information.
"This is horrible news for all of us," Vladimir Ryzhkov,
an independent member of parliament, said on Echo of Moscow. "In
Russia, there is no independent, national television station."
Kiselyov and most of the TV6 journalists joined the station
last spring. They previously worked at NTV, but left after that
station was taken over by state-connected natural gas giant Gazprom,
and Berezovsky offered them the chance to broadcast on TV6.
See also:
TV6
case
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