TV Station Denied License for Political Programming

The Georgian National Communications Commission (GNCC) has denied issuing a license for political programming to a small TV station, Maestro.

Maestro TV, which goes out on cable in the capital Tbilisi, as well as in Rustavi, Telavi and Gori, has a license for airing entertainment and music programs.

Few months ago the TV station, however, also launched three new projects, which deal mainly with politics – Journalism as a Profession , a talk-show, which hosted invited guest, very often politicians; No Comment – covering news stories through live footage and without commentary; Polling – call-in talk-show, wherein only viewers were speaking live and expressing their views.

On March 20 the TV station has received a letter of reprimand from GNCC warning that the station had no right to air political programming, which triggered the Maestro TV to suspend airing those three programs. Then the TV station applied for a licence for political programming. But GNCC refused citing that the television was once already reprimanded.

Mamuka Glonti, head of the TV station, said on April 8 that the GNCC”s reason for denial was just a pretext and he recalled a previous precedent, when in 2006 Pirveli Stereo TV”s license terms were modified by GNCC itself. He said at that time Pirveli Stereo had not even applied for modification of license terms. Pirveli Stereo is part of a media holding, which is owned by MP Davit Bezhuashvili, brother of intelligence chief, Gela Bezhuashvili, which also unites Rustavi 2 and Mze TV stations.

“We have first applied to GNCC to modify our license terms in late November,” Glonti told the RFE/RL Georgian service. “But we were told that to obtain new license would have been much easier than modifying of existing license terms. But this “easy” process lasted for five months; although it was absolutely possible to settle the issue within a month. We have tried to have that license, but for some reasons the process was dragged-out.”

Meanwhile, the TV station was broadcasting its three new projects. “But it was not a violation of [broadcast license terms],” Glonti has claimed. He said that he had met with chief of the GNCC legal department and the sides reached “a verbal agreement” that GNCC would have warned the television station verbally before issuing an official letter of reprimand. He said that GNCC has violated that verbal agreement.

“We will now appeal to GNCC and request it to modify our license term; we hope that the incident will be resolved by GNCC”s consent to our request,” he said. “If our request on modifying license terms is not satisfied by GNCC in the nearest future it will be a sign that they are not willing to do that and in that case we will have a reason to start speaking about [restricting] freedom of speech in respect of Maestro TV.”

Glonti told Civil.Ge later on April 8 that he had applied to GNCC for a modification of the license terms and he expected a response in a month.

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