From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 1/17/2008 11:52 AM
Russian TV Row Splits Azerbaijan

17-Jan-08

Speakers of Russian complain as broadcasting dispute leads to Moscow channels going off the air.

By Tamara Grigoryeva in Baku (17-Jan-08)
“Come in, my dear,” said the old woman, her thin bent form clothed in a sleeveless woollen jacket over a blue dress. She pushed open the door to admit a tall young man into her sitting-room, which overlooks a park in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital.

“Here it is, as good as new,” said 68-year-old Dina Vasilievna, pointing to her television set. “Now, son, how much would you give for it?”

The man, 29-year-old Elnur, buys up old televisions and other second-hand electronic equipment. He says the number of people selling off their televisions has risen sharply since the New Year, when the Russian television station RTR was taken off the air in Baku.

“Most of the people selling their TV sets are old people,” said Elnur. “They just don’t need them any more.”

Dina Vasilievna said she was giving up watching television now that the Russian national channels had disappeared.

“I used to watch ORT and RTR every day,” she said. “Last year, they pulled the plug on ORT, and now they’ve done it for RTR from January 1. I don’t understand the Azeri language well, and the local channels have no Russian-language programmes. That’s why I’m selling my TV. What use is it to me?”

In Jul, 2007, Azerbaijan’s National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council decided that the rebroadcasting of all foreign television channels should end.

The Moscow-based ORT was the first to go off air, followed by the Turkish STV. The fate of other Russian channels available in Azerbaijan was then placed in the hands of a joint Russian-Azerbaijani government commission. The Azerbaijani position was that AzTV should be put on the airwaves in Russia.

The Turkish channel TRT-1 remained on air after a reciprocal arrangement was reached to broadcast AzTV in Turkey.

Negotiations with RTR, however, ended in deadlock.

“Talks in Moscow showed that Russia is not yet prepared to have AzTV broadcast on its territory under an intergovernmental agreement,” said Nushiravan Magerramli, who chairs Azerbaijan’s broadcasting council. “We did warn them that we would halt RTR broadcasts if that issue was not resolved.”

The Russians have delayed giving a final answer, citing technical problems. According to Russian ambassador Vasily Istratov, “It would be wrong to remove the issue from the negotiating table.”

RTR was still on the air in Azerbaijan on December 31, entertaining Azerbaijanis with New Year programmes. But early on the morning of New Year’s Day, the broadcasts stopped.

Istratov told journalists the move came as a surprise to him.

“I had great hopes that the political will the two sides expressed in a political document as far back as July 2007 would make it possible for us to resolve all the issues,” said the ambassador. “Now a quite difficult situation has arisen since the subject under discussion [RTR] has been removed from the negotiating table, and I can’t see how we can possibly continue them.”

Moscow has not responded officially to the Azerbaijani government’s move.

“We are not expecting any response,” said Magerramli. “We’ve done our work.”

The closure of the Russian channel came as a blow to Russian speakers living in the country. Baku has a long tradition as a Russian-speaking city, with native Azerbaijanis there often speaking Russian better than their own language.

“The standard of the Azerbaijani channels is not even average,” said Chingiz Aliev, who teaches in the Foreign Languages University in Baku. “RTR gave us a chance to see professional work, and now they’ve deprived us of it.”

“The impression is that Russian speakers are not treated with respect in this country,” sighed Gulnara Askerova, 25, who works in a bank. “And this is at a time when the president’s website cites Russian is shown as one of the main languages alongside Azerbaijani.”

Others, however, defend the Azerbaijani authorities’ action.

“Our government did the right thing by shutting down all the foreign channels,” said Mahir Gurbanov, a student in Baku’s Oil Academy. “We have our own channels, and people who don’t like them should install satellite or cable TV.”

“All citizens of this country should know the state language after we’ve been independent from Russia for so many years,” said Sevil Gahramanova, an Azerbaijani language teacher at a secondary school. “It’s ludicrous that they want to have RTR broadcast just because we have a Russian-speaking population here.”

Television critic Elshad Guliev said the move would not make a big difference.

“The population still watches Russian television via satellite or cable,” he said. “To be honest, I am not delighted with the Russian channels – they are not what they used to be.”

However, the leader of Azerbaijan’s Civil Solidarity Party, member of parliament Sabir Rustamkhanli, said pulling RTR from the airwaves had left the local public with reduced access to information.

“Azerbaijani channels should cooperate with Russian ones,” he said. “I think it was wrong to shut down RTR-Planeta by making it a condition that an Azerbaijani channel should be broadcast in Russia.”

Azerbaijan’s broadcasting council is taking its time about announcing a competition for the broadcasting frequency left vacant by RTR.

Council officials say they might still resume negotiations with their Russian colleagues.

Many people in Baku not believe such promises and have started buying satellite dishes or installing cable television.

“I used to have two orders a day at most, but now it seems everyone is in a mad stampede – they call non-stop and come to the office asking us to install antennas,” said Amil Mahmudov, 23, who works for a satellite installation firm. He said that he had a waiting list, and customers sometimes had to wait for two weeks to get a dish mounted at their homes.

A satellite dish costs 150-180 manats (175-210 US dollars) or more, including installation costs. A cable television connection costs 10 manats (around 12 dollars) a month.

Those prices are too much for some Russian-speaking pensioners, who are left with nothing now that they cannot get the Moscow channels.

“My pension is 70 manats a month, so how can I afford to buy an aerial?” asked Vasilievna. “So I’ve had to sell my TV set, and now my only entertainment will be playing the piano.”

Tamara Grigoryeva is a correspondent for APA news agency in Baku.
 
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