Alexey Volin, the Russian deputy minister of telecom and mass communications, has presented a bailout plan to the heads of the country’s National Association of Broadcasters (NAB).
According to the Russian Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications (Minsvyaz), it carried out consultations with representatives of leading TV channels, publishing houses, associations of publishers and TV and radio broadcasters. Anti-recessionary measures are based on results of these consultations.
It adds that the industry’s two main goals are the reduction of costs and increasing revenues.
Measures aimed at achieving the former include prohibiting unreasonable increase of prices on paper, import-substituting of equipment and content, rejecting from bids and contracts in foreign currency, reasonable branch limitations of salaries and optimising payrolls.
Meanwhile, increasing revenues will be achieved by, in particular, the liberalisation of the ad market, including the removal of restrictions on advertising of alcohol, prescription medicines, transfer of responsibilities for advertising of biologically active supplements from producer to advertiser, removal of restrictions in radio and TV programmes for children and the introduction of teleshopping.
Other measures imply support for the entrance of Russian media companies into foreign markets in order to increase sales of their productions, increasing the of quality of produced content and fighting with internet piracy.
Volin said that, “our industry doesn’t demand additional government financing. It just asks for an opportunity to earn.”
