Russia Media - Kremlin-critical private TV station taken off air
TAPE: EF03/0572
IN_TIME: 22:11:22
DURATION: 2:15
SOURCES: APTN
RESTRICTIONS:
DATELINE: Moscow, 22 June 2003
SHOTLIST
June 22 2003
1. Ostankino TV tower
2. Evgeny Kiselyov coming out to the press
3. Kiselyov and journalists
4. SOUNDBITE: (English) Yevgeny Kiselyov, TVS channel Editor-in-chief
"We were kicked out of former NTV. We were switched off TV-6 and now we are switched-off for the second time. Actually it is the third time (that) we loose the chance of communicating with Russian audience."
FILE - January 2002
5. Various of TV-6 studio and MCR (Master Control Room) switched off air
June 22 2003
6. SOUNDBITE: (English) Yevgeny Kiselyov, TVS channel Editor-in-chief
"It's both politics and economics, finance. The channel was losing money and nobody helped us. The owners decided not to get the channel out of the crisis. It looks like they are going to bankrupt the channel".
7. Journalists around Kiselyov
8. SOUNDBITE: (English) Yevgeny Kiselyov, TVS channel Editor-in-chief
"First, I am going to help my former colleagues, the journalists, who were working for our channel, to find new jobs. After that, probably, I will looking for myself."
FILE - January 2002
9. Various of journalists in TV studios
STORY LINE
The Russian government shut down one of the country's two main private television stations on Sunday.
In doing so it forced off the air a team of journalists who have been at the centre of a media freedom debate in Russia for the past two years.
TVS, created from the ashes of two other television stations that came into conflict with state-connected companies, was shut down early on Sunday.
It was replaced with a new state-run sports channel.
Some employees learned the station had been closed while listening to the radio on their way to work.
Coming ahead of December's parliamentary elections and next year's presidential vote, the demise of TVS gives the government overwhelming influence over what goes out on the nation's airwaves, again raising questions about a free press in President Vladimir Putin's Russia.
The closure was not unexpected.
Debt-ridden TVS had been dropped earlier this month by Moscow's main cable company over unpaid bills, depriving it of its largest viewer market.
Only two days ago, TVS's news director warned that the end might be imminent.
Television's strong political influence in Russia is no secret.
Independent stations rallied behind former President Boris Yeltsin to help him win re-election over his Communist rival in 1996.
But the same stations also angered the Kremlin by bringing piercing war footage of the first Chechen campaign into Russian homes nightly, helping turn public opinion.
Yevgeny Kiselyov, TVS channel Editor-in-chief, and some of his journalistic team had originally worked for NTV, the biggest private station.
But when 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, Kiselyov and others fled to the privately-run TV6 in protest.
That station was shut down last year in a dispute with a shareholder, a government-connected pension fund.
TV6 journalists then formed another station, TVS, backed by Media-Sotsium, a group of business executives loyal to the Kremlin.
TVS news didn't produce the kind of hard-hitting reporting that distinguished the previous NTV or TV6.
But Kiselyov still went after Putin in his weekly Sunday news show, often with obvious disdain.
TVS, however, was plagued by financial difficulties, partly due to infighting among its powerful oligarch investors.
The channel's staff had not been paid in three months, and it didn't have access to the kind of popular programming that draws-in advertisers.