Russia Strives For Order in TV Chaos

The Russian parliament is set to take up a broadcasting bill this month that will attempt to rationalize the disorder of Russia's airwaves.


The Supreme Soviet is scheduled to give a first reading to the bill on Feb. 17. The bill will set up a new television and radio commission and establish new licensing procedures. It is also likely to limit future foreign investment in Russian broadcasting companies to 25 percent.


The revolution in Russia's broadcasting industry has brought hundreds of new radio and TV stations to the airwaves across the country, many of whom operate without licenses.


Even the country's largest state-owned broadcasters, Ostankino and Russian Television and Radio, do not have licenses. The St. Petersburg Channel was awarded a license only to have it revoked last Thursday after the Broadcasting Commission, set up a year ago to license broadcasters, said it had discovered that the channel was not registered as a judicial body.


The Broadcasting Commission, which will be replaced under the new law, has awarded licenses for around 300 frequencies and cable networks. A similar number are awaiting a license, but are already broadcasting on radio and television throughout Russia.


The Broadcasting Commission, which only has four members working full-time, is overwhelmed with applications, said the commission's cochairman, Alexei Simonov.


"All we need is time, patience and the law", he said.


Simonov maintained there are no outside influences on the body, although he says that a political attempt was made last year to influence Moscow's first competitive tender for a frequency.


When Moscow's Channel 6 was put on offer, a last-minute bid came from the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty which, according to Simonov, had the backing of Mikhail Poltoranin, who was then minister for press and information.


"Everyone thought that it would be pushed through", said Simonov.


But the frequency was awarded for four hours a day to a Russian broadcaster called Business University and for 20 hours to Moscow Independent Broadcasting Company, which has a joint venture with Turner International, the parent company of CNN.


The largest foreign investment in the Commonwealth of Independent States so far has come from a little-known U. S. company, StoryFirst Communications, that owns 50 percent of the St. Petersburg Channel 6 and 50 percent of Ukraine's national commercial station, ICTV.


"It's a network almost the size of the BBC and we own half of it", says the StoryFirst chairman, Peter Gerway. He said he hoped to be grandfathered in under the new law that could limit foreign ownership.


The Moscow television market has a number of newcomers, but many are hard to receive.


CNN International is relayed on UHF Channel 24 and claims 400, 000 viewers in Moscow. Revenues are split between Channel 24, a state-owned company, and CNN. The service started inserting local ads last November. The rate card, which offers one minute at $100 to $250, reflects the low ad rates available in the country's capital.


Channel 6, the station owned by Moscow Independent Broadcasting Company, took to the airwaves on Jan. 1. The entirely Russian-owned station Marathon began broadcasting on Channel 27 this January. A consortium of Russian businessmen plans to open a television station called Accept to broadcast in the Moscow area on Channel 47.


But Moscow's 2x2 Channel, which broke away from state control as soon as the August 1991 coup had died down, remains the only independent television channel that can be picked up loud and clear by all Moscow's viewers because it shares airtime with the state-owned Moscow channel.