Russian embassy demands Belarusian authorities to explain TV stations switching off

• 1.04.2009, 11:36

The Embassy of Russian in Belarus doesn’t understand why a number of Russian TV channels have been switched off by the cable operators.

“We haven’t received any official statements from the Belarusian side so far. We were trying to get to the Ministry of Foreign Affaires of Belarus, but didn’t get an answer,” a representative of the Russian embassy told Interfax.

Since April 1, broadcasting of Russian Channel One (World Network), NTV Mir, RenTV, and RTR-Planeta have been stopped in Belarus.

The agency has learnt that the union of the cable operators will have a session on Wednesday that will adopt an official position on the decision to stop broadcasting of certain Russian TV stations in Belarus.

As Alena Klyuikova, head of the department of programs of Cosmos-TV, the biggest cable operator in Belarus, told the agency that “the decision had been taken inside the company Cosmos-TV”. She refused to say the reasons, induced the company to stop broadcasting of a number of Russian TV channels, which will be replaced by TV stations Russia. Vesti 24 Hours, Mir. CIS, and TNT.

“We haven’t received any oral or written orders from above demanding us to stop broadcasting of RenTV channel,” Ihar Tsyrkun, deputy director of the company “Minsk TV Information Networks”, said to the agency.

According to him, “the decision was taken by our company on economic grounds”. I. Tsyrkun explained that the Belarusian channel “Stolichnoe Televidenie” re-transmit some programs of Ren-TV. “So, we pay to the rights holder two times, and repeatedly received complaints from unsatisfied subscribers, who had to pay twice for watching the same programs,” the representative of the company said.