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BBC Off the FM Dial in Russia
Today is the last day the British Broadcasting Co.'s Russian service will be heard in Russia at 99.6 MHz on FM radio. The Finam investment holding company has purchased Bolshoe Radio (Big Radio), which broadcast the British programming. That company decided that the station's license does not allow for the broadcasting of BBC programming.
Finam and the BBC disagreed on the reading of the license granted to Big Radio. Finam lawyers hold that it requires all programming to be produced by the station itself. The Federal Mass Communications, Communications and Preservation of Cultural Heritage Supervisory Service, which is responsible for enforcing the licensing conditions, agreed with Finam. The BBC had been broadcasting on Big Radio three hours a day on weekdays since April of this year. At the end of last year, the Moscow radio station Arsenal dropped BBC programming after the discovery of licensing violations, as did Radio Leningrad in St. Petersburg.
A BBC source told Kommersant that the licensing of the BBC was discussed with deputy head of the presidential executive staff Vladislav Surkov and head of the Federal Agency for the Press and Mass Communications Mikhail Seslavinsky, who admitted that it received the license thanks to “political support” and that Finam was told that “political support has been taken away.” Such situations had arisen before, but representatives of the British Foreign Office had flown to Moscow to settle the problems. Finam PR manager Igor Ermachenko denied that information, saying that “We are an investment company and we don't play political games.” BBC programming will still be heard on middle-wave broadcasts.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 18, 2007
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