Information Ministry Takes Control in Radio BA, Russkoye Radio and Cosmos TV Media

On Octo­ber 3, 2016, the Belaru­sian Radio and TV Broad­cast­ing Cen­ter (BRTC) joined Bel­t­ele­com in a ver­ti­cal merg­er. Thus, Bel­t­ele­com has become the only com­pa­ny pro­vid­ing ser­vices of ter­res­tri­al tele­vi­sion and radio. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Bel­t­ele­com under­lined that ser­vices were pro­vid­ed to legal bod­ies hav­ing per­mit from the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion and the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Informa­ti­za­tion. The com­pa­ny esti­mates that there are around half a mil­lion peo­ple who use broad­cast TV in Belarus.

The Coun­cil of Min­is­ters ruled to trans­fer the shares of the three mass media, which had been under oper­a­tional con­trol of the BRTC accord­ing to the right of eco­nom­ic man­age­ment, to the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion. Now, the Ministry’s shares in the autho­rized funds com­prise 34 per cent of the BA Inter­na­tion­al (Belaru­sian-Amer­i­can enter­prise), or $44.2 thou­sand of con­tri­bu­tion to the autho­rized fund; 34 per cent or 367.2 BYN of the Russkoye Radio; and 29 per cent or 58 BYN of the Cos­mos TV Media.