The NCTR had long turned a blind eye to thousands of violations of the Advertisement Act ending the year without any penalties or fines, whereas the year 2011 was significant in the sense that the commission eventually found 1 violation during the year. The commission struck such an unprecedented “blow” to Armenia TV. As for what that TV company did to attract such attention, it violated Article 9 of the Act, which stipulates, “It is forbidden to interrupt a 10-minute-long radio program and a 20-minute-long TV show for commercials more than once.” According to the report on the 2011 budget made by the NCTR to the National Assembly, this institution added roughly 151 million AMD, which is the official payment for licenses, to the state treasury.
The council of the Public Television saved 4 million AMD of government money given to it last year. It spent more than 27 million AMD on membership fees. It spent as much as 8 million AMD on public opinion studies. It took another 172 million AMD from the reserve fund of the Armenian government. The report mentions that some changes were made in the programming policy of the Public Television in 2011 – hours for socio-economic, socio-political and cultural programs, as well as homegrown movies, have increased.
The Public Television got 2.4 billion AMD of government money in 2011. According to the results, in 2010, 20 percent of the whole TV audience watched H1, whereas in 2011, it improved that result by 3%.
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The report refers to the ratings data provided by the Telemediacontrol closed corporation, according to which 7 out of 15 most popular TV programs were shown on the Public Television – Anna 2 and Angels’ School TV series, the EURO 2012 qualification match between Ireland and Armenia, Junior Eurovision 2011, Tesankyun (viewpoint) news and analytical program, Arajin (first) news program. As a fait accompli, they mention the fame of the Arajin news program, which continued to be the program with the biggest TV audience – 26.43% share. According to the ratings data of the Telemediacontrol company, 9 out of 10 best sports programs were also shown on the Public Television.
As for the money that was spent, H1 spent 1.2 out of 3.6 billion AMD on salaries and social payments. A bit more, 1.6 billion AMD was spent on production, 623 million AMD on broadcasting and 71 million was mentioned by the company as other costs.
Hripsime JEBEJYAN
