ArmInfo. The activity of the advertising media market in Armenia, of course, needs to be streamlined. A similar opinion was expressed by ArmInfo, President of Yerevan Press Club Boris Navasardyan.
"The reason for the turnover in our media market is quite large shadow funds accumulated illegally. These funds are not shown in any report and, nevertheless, fully support the activities of some media. First of all, this state of affairs violates the interests of their audience. Citizens who use the services of the media, they must know how this or that media product is produced. First of all, in order to understand whether one or another media can be trusted, "he stressed.
The expert attaches great importance to the regulation of the advertising market with a view to withdrawing working capital from the shadows, as well as identifying the real owners of the Armenian media. According to Navasardyan, this circumstance is very important from the point of view of the influence of the media on public opinion. According to him, only time will show how successful the preliminary initiatives of the authorities in this direction will turn out to be.
On January 16, the Government of Armenia decided to allocate 26.6 million drams to the Council of the Public Television and Radio Company of Armenia to conduct an international audit of research and monitoring of digital television audience conducted by Athmospere Armenia. Audit purpose - verification of the reliability and compliance with international criteria of the methodology for conducting this monitoring. At the same time, the National Assembly is preparing to adopt the draft amendments to the "Law on the Media", providing for a change in the rules of the game in this field.
According to Navasardyan, the Armenian media annually receive tens of millions of dollars from advertising. In his opinion, it is necessary to achieve the distribution of these amounts among all market participants, and not between specially defined media. The expert sees the solution to the issue through certain practical steps. At the same time, he assessed the possible decision to provide the right to sell advertising services to the Public Television of Armenia as quite controversial.
At the last government meeting, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan described Armenian private television channels as corrupt, and media advertising as monopolized. Expressing dissatisfaction with the monopoly situation existing in the country's media market, the prime minister said that the consistent policy of the Government is the need to obtain specific answers to questions in connection with various monopolistic phenomena.
In particular, the prime minister noted the presence of two structures on the market. The first distributes funds from television advertising, the second conducts ratings of television companies, on the basis of which these funds are distributed between television companies. According to his estimates, this mechanism is fully automated, and the distribution system of advertising on the television market is monopolized, which gives these two structures clear control functions over information flows. Pashinyan announced the readiness of the Government to continue working towards the eradication of control over the media "by persons connected by family ties with representatives of the previous government."