Ukraine: Council to tax global television networks, require Ukrainian

[Bridget Goodman]

Source:  http://www.kyivpost.com/business/general/28774/

Council to tax global television networks, require Ukrainian 
by Anna Poludenko, Kyiv Post Staff Writer 
Apr 03 2008, 02:05 
© KP Media

Your English-language BBC News may soon be in Ukrainian. 

All international channels re-broadcasting into Ukraine must provide a Ukrainian language translation, according to a late February amendment adopted by Ukraine’s National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council. 

In addition, the amendment requires all international channels to open a representative office in the country and pay taxes based on the channel’s advertising revenue. 

It still needs approval from Ukraine’s parliament, and may face further adjustments within the council. 

But cable television companies and radio and television announcers criticized the amendment, alleging the new regulation violates the Constitution’s guarantee to direct information access. 

“It is clear this isn’t about the language quality of the content broadcasted on the air or on cable,” said Olha Bolshakova, head of the legal center for the Independent Association of Television and Radio Announcers. 

In fact, English ­language television in Ukraine may become a casualty of Russian television networks abusing the Ukrainian airwaves, she said. 

“Such discussions are a response to the extremely tendentious coverage of elections in Ukraine by Russian channels that bordered on hidden agitation.” 

Bolshakova referred to the coverage of Ukrainian politics by Russian networks, which were re­broadcast in Ukraine as part of a package of international channels on cable television. 

For example, during Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, Russian TV channel NTV broadcasted empty streets, reporting that no one in the country supported it. 

In 2006, a journalist from Russian RTR network reported there were secret US Central Intelligence Agency jails in the Kyiv oblast, which was later refuted by the government. 

Politicians from the pro­presidential Our Ukraine­ People’s Self­ Defense Bloc supported the council’s move. 
The council should have the right to influence the content of international channels that “allow anti­-Ukrainian announcements in news coverage,” said Yuriy Stets, an Our Ukraine­ People’s Self­ Defense deputy and secretary of the Parliamentary Committee for Freedom of Speech and Information. 

The council will decide on how to implement the changes, but Bolshakova called the language amendment “unrealistic” for implementation. 

Subtitling the television programs for retransmission will be “extremely expensive” and cable companies will be forced to raise fees, she said. 

The council did not respond to requests for comment from the Post. 

In all likelihood, international channels like the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) or the Discovery Channel, two English­-language channels retransmitted in Ukraine, would have to open offices in the country to do the language adaptation and commercial filling, said the Cable Television Union of Ukraine. 

Making money through taxing advertising profit is the real aim behind the council’s new legislation, said Yulia Molchanova, the Union’s chief. 

The council is aiming “to allow for money from commercials to pass through a single set of hands” to control advertising revenues, she said. 

“At the last council session, a council representative said that this is more of an advertising issue than a language one,” she said. 

The council wants to make international channels broadcasted in Ukraine pay national taxes, Stets said. Taxes from commercials on international channels are paid in the countries from where they broadcast, not in Ukraine where they are re­transmitted.


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