Kazakhstan Getting Rid Of Russian propaganda
- 3.01.2024, 18:44
More than 10 Russian TV channels were removed from the broadcasting network in the country.
Partner of Kazteleradio JSC, satellite and Internet broadcasting operator TVCOM, has stopped broadcasting Russian TV channels of the PKVS Kazakhstan LLP family. The list includes “First Channel of the CIS”, “Time: Far and Near”, “Telecafe”, “Music on the First”, “Carousel”, “Oh!”, “Pojechali”, “Dom Kino”, “Dom Kino Premium”, “Pobieda” and “Bobr”, writes The Moscow Times.
The company explained that they made this decision as part of “reducing the number of channels with an information agenda.” By order of management, the share of foreign broadcasters with news content will be gradually reduced — they will be replaced by high-rated entertainment, film and educational TV channels, including Discovery, Animal Planet and Eurosport.
TVCOM noted that the operator’s subscribers “have reached a high level of media literacy and receive news information mainly from social media,” and the content of Channel One was not exclusive and can be watched for free via the Internet. As for children's and entertainment channels, they were forced to go under the knife, since they were part of a package, “the range of which is of a forced, non-alternative nature,” the company added.
PKVS Kazakhstan LLP is a subsidiary of “Channel One OJSC. World Network”. The official representative of the latter, Irina Kalashnikova, stated that the reasons voiced by TVCOM do not correspond to reality and the disconnection of the package is due to the operator’s debt.
“We did not reach a consensus for 2024, so the agreement was not concluded. The main reason is the operator’s debt to the copyright holder. Debt from 2022 to the current day,” she clarified.
According to Kalashnikova, the company “until the last” tried to maintain the relationship, gave installments and did not impose any penalties, despite the fact that this was provided for in the contract. “But the operator did not pay. Due to this we were forced to shut down. The operator was notified of the outage. We have been warning about this for a year,” she said.
In November, by decision of the Kazakh authorities, the Sputnik24 portal was blocked in the country, which made it possible to watch Channel One, Rossiya 1, Rossiya 24, NTV and Russia Today. The reason was “the dissemination of information about conditional access cards to the services of television and radio broadcasting operators and equipment that do not have a license in the territory of the republic.”
In August, the website of the Tsargrad TV channel was blocked for “propaganda of extremism.” The decision was made by the Ministry of Information and Social Development of Kazakhstan.