The holiday game of “Chto? Gde? Kogda?” or “What? Where? When?” TV show has aroused a lot of speculation. Let us remind that high-ranking officials of our country participated in this show and all of them spoke Russian.
It is worth noticing that one cannot manage to find out the man who is responsible for broadcasting language in our country, who must supervise and doesn’t do that. Competent bodies shift that function one onto another.
Grigor Amalyan, the President of the National Commission on TV and Radio (NCTR), repeated in this regard what he had previously said to Radio Liberty. He assures that they were not a competent body to consider that issue and in that instance interfering with the competence of another body, namely National Language Inspection, would not be right.
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Sergo Yeritsyan, the head of the Language Inspection, assured during a conversation with us, “At the moment NCTR is responsible for all problems concerning television, but since the law does not provide for any punishment for language violations in TV broadcasting, it cannot do anything.” We told Mr. Yeritsyan that NCTR absolutely denied that it was responsible, moreover, it didn’t think that interfering with the competence of Language Inspection was right and Mr. Yeritsyan noted that there was only a bill at the moment, according to which the responsibility for broadcasting language was shifted onto the inspection, but it was not passed yet.
In response to a question what he thought, as a specialist, about the fact that TV shows are broadcasted in Russian, Mr. Yeritsyan said, “It is undoubtedly a violation of the law, none the less, there are exceptions related to minorities, but it is not regulated in principle. There is no clarification on what TV shows for minorities should be like, how to distinguish them. Now nobody measures what percentage of TV broadcasting should be for minorities, we haven’t measured it either. We have published a book and there are all concerns related to TV broadcasting. We have made a research, but we cannot punish, hold anyone accountable, since no law regulates that. Everything is regulated in the area of TV broadcasting except for that.”
Karen Kocharyan, the chief producer of the Armenian version of “What? Where? When?” TV show, said to the Radio Liberty, “I act, according to the law. I do not break the law. The law allows 20% broadcasting for minorities.” However Karen Kocharyan said during an interview given to “Aravot” daily newspaper (30.04.2010) that according to the license, that TV show could be both in Armenian and in Russian, but they had chosen Russian. Moreover, according to his words Armenian viewer is compelled to watch the show in a foreign language not because it is for minorities, but because they don’t have time to send the questions to Moscow, to translate them into Russian, “The Moscow editors watch and follow these games and they surely do not understand Armenian.”
Besides, the owner of famous Chto? Gde? Kogda? game sets some conditions, according to which not only the main rules of the game, but also the music, studio view, rules for conducting and filming must be preserved. There is no demand concerning language.
Hripsime JEBEJYAN
