Party Calls for Opposition Control Over Public TV’s Second Channel
Kakha Kukava, a co-leader of the opposition Conservatives Party, proposed on November 13 to hand over management of the public TV’s second channel to a council composed by the opposition parties.
The authorities and the public TV management announced early this month about the plans to switch the public TV’s second channel to a solely political programming providing live coverage of statements and press conferences by politicians and political parties. They said the move aimed at giving the opposition more access to the broadcast media.
Kukava said at a news conference that the proposal would be more affective if the channel was controlled by the opposition political parties, in particular by a broad composed by those parties, which have cleared 5% electoral threshold in the May 21 parliamentary elections, except of the ruling National Movement Party. “Otherwise this proposal [by the authorities] would remain a farce,” he said.
Levan Kubaneishvili, the public TV general director, said that setting up an additional structure within the public TV was not appropriate.
“The second channel is a part of the Georgian Public Broadcaster, which has its board of trustees, which was set up based on the agreement between the political parties. Hence, I consider it inappropriate to establish additional structure,” he told Rustavi 2 TV.
The Georgian Public Broadcaster has two channels – the first, which is the main one and the second channel, which is now used for airing live the parliamentary sessions. The second channel is now also used for airing hearings of the parliamentary commission studying the August war.
The second channel does not cover entire territory of Georgia. “It however covers all the major cities in the country,” the public TV general director said in early November, “and we hope that [geographical] area of coverage will further increase as a result of technical upgrade.”
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