Anyone out there interested in buying a troubled television station for a third of its market value? Well, the family of Georgia’s Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili has one to sell. The channel comes with state-of-the-art equipment and has a successful record as a political campaign tool. The prime minister may be willing to throw in a news agency, too, as a lagniappe.
The signal for Tbilisi-based TV9 went static on August 19 after barely a year and a half on the air. Ivanishvili went through fire and water last year to create the national channel, owned by his wife, Ekaterine Kvedelidze, and Kakha Kobiashvili, a relative of Ivanishvili.
The station was intended to insert a dose of criticism into the airwaves then dominated by broadcasts friendly toward President Mikheil Saakashvili. The news channel may have helped bring Ivanishvili and his Georgian Dream coalition to power, but has since become a money pit and source of awkwardness for the prime minister.
“I have always believed and I still believe today that national leaders should not own television stations,” Ivanishvili said, Netgazeti.ge reported. “As I said many times before, it puts me personally and my family in an awkward situation."
After the 2012 parliamentary elections brought the Georgian Dream to power, the prime minister's family "wanted to sell TV9 and Info9 news agency, but out of responsibility and respect for journalists and other employees we extended its operations for 10 more months.”
But enough is enough. Ivanishvili, who has pledged to leave his post by the end of the year, said he can’t continue spending a million dollars a month to keep the station alive.
In television-addicted Georgia, the ability to control a TV station remotely is often seen an essential requirement for success in politics.
Although, officially, TV9 does not belong to Ivanishvili himself, the prime minister described himself as its owner -- a description which tallies with Georgian viewers' perceptions, as well.
Dumping the family television station three months ahead of a presidential election may mean that Ivanishvili is fairly confident that his pick for president, ex-Education Minister Giorgi Margvelashvili, will prevail in the upcoming vote against UNM parliamentary minority leader Davit Bakradze.
The closure of the channel, though, leaves scores of reporters unemployed. Some of them left pro-Saakashvili channels to migrate to TV9 once the station started hiring, making grand farewell statements about how they couldn’t stand being part of the then-ruling UNM's propaganda machine anymore.
To many Georgians, though, the sale of TV9 doesn't mean that now a sharp line has been drawn between privately owned media and the government. UNM parliamentarian Chiora Taktakishvili alleged that Ivanishvili and his Georgian Dream will try to control the political narrative from other, formally independent television networks.
And the United National Movement knows a thing or two about controlling broadcast media. Just a year ago, Georgian viewers had a hard time finding a Georgian news channel that did not broadcast President Saakashvili opening factories, touring villages and embracing elderly groupies.
But, so far, no sign that the Ivanishvili family has included the prospect of a career in Georgian politics as one of the selling points for TV9.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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