As is well-known to anyone who, finding themselves in a foreign country, has ever tried to listen to a sports commentary over the Internet, the question of international broadcasting rights is extremely complicated, and while some users of this list may well feel that any broadcaster in its right mind would offer huge sums to divest itself of the right to cover the European Song Contest, there are parts of Europe where the event attracts large audiences and is taken very seriously. The Ukrainian First National Channel pays a large sum of money for exclusive coverage in the expectation that it will thereby gain an enormous audience and in consequence will be able to charge correspondingly enormous sums for advertising slots.
Most of the the main Russian television companies have separate international channels which have schedules stripped of those programmes for which the companies do not possess international broadcasting rights, a category which includes, incidentally, several quiz programmes with imported formats, notably the Russian versions of 'Who wants to be a Millionnaire?' and 'The Weakest Link'. The problem seems to be that the version piped through Ukraine's cable networks is not the international channel, but something closer to the 'home' version. Presumably if the cable operators were to switch to the international version, the rights problem would disappear, as, however, would many popular programmes.
Two final points: it is unlikely that other foreign broadcasters whose programmes might be transmitted by Ukrainian cable operators are similarly neglectful of rights issues, and RTR itself, when it has rights of its own to protect, is much less cavalier in its approach: programmes which it has hopes of selling abroad (e.g. the recent adaptation of "Master and Margarita') are carefully kept off the international channel.
John Dunn.
-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Jameson <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:36:25 -0000
Subject: Ukrainians are close to ending Russian-language TV
Johnson's Russia List
2009-#18
27 January 2009
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#26
Transitions Online
www.tol.cz <outbind://23/www.tol.cz>
23 January 2009
Ukraine: Familiar Voices Fade Away
Ukrainians are shocked and confused by the
authorities’ move to silence much Russian-language TV.
By Nataliya Boyko
Nataliya Boyko is a journalist in Donetsk, Ukraine.
John Dunn
Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow, Scotland
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