Russia’s Ministry of Communications is formulating legislation regulating the relationship between pay-TV operators and TV channels.
Quoted by Kommersant, Alexei Volin, the ministry’s deputy head, said that channels funded by advertising and free to viewers should be guaranteed free distribution by networks, at least on a regional basis.
He added that there are precedents when operators try to charge money for the distribution of channels and vice versa.
In the case of channels employing the advertising business model, such agreements should be banned.
This, in his view, would protect regional channels and guarantee cable distribution for channels allocated a place on the second DTT multiplex.
This would put these channels, which include Ren TV, CTC, Domashny, Sport Plus and TV3, on an equal footing with the channels on the first DTT multiplex.
At present some channel operators pay for distribution in Russia.
However, providers of popular services, including Discovery, Sony and Viasat, charge a fee, which can amount to 20-25% of the revenue operators make from the distribution of each group’s channels.
Meanwhile, DTH operators such as Orion Express make over 20% of their revenues from channels they distribute.
