Post Staff Writer
 According to Volia Cable President Serhy Boyko, a majority of the customers who responded to a poll indicated they would like to see foreign-language channels replaced with Russian- or Ukrainian-language ones. (Post photo by Oleksy Boyko) |
With Volia Cable, Kyiv�s leading cable television provider, restructuring its service by moving some channels into its more expensive digital packages, subscribers are scrambling to react. Gone from Volia�s less-expensive 30-channel analog Sotsialny package as of Feb. 1 will be four channels. Britain�s BBC World, Germany�s Deutsche Welle, France�s TV5 and China�s CCTV4 will move to digital, the base package for which costs Hr 27.40 a month, Hr 13.40 more a month than the Sotsialny package. For the capital�s English, French, German and Chinese speakers, that means upgrading to digital, buying a set-top box and card for Hr 400 and paying twice the monthly fees. |
Poland�s TV Polonia, plus five Russian and 18 Ukrainian stations, will be unaffected by the changes.
Three new channels will be added to analogue service: Donetsk-based Kyivska Rus, about which little is known, except that it may have a religious emphasis; MuzTV, a music channel from Russia; and a channel that remains unnamed, but that, rumors say, will have a political emphasis.
Critics have called the move bad for business.
�Volia attracted subscribers by promising CNN, BBC, Deutsche Welle, and so on,� said Serhiy Sholokh, president of Continent Radio station in Kyiv. Sholokh is also an adviser to the Verkhovna Rada�s Committee on Freedom of Speech and Mass Media. In both roles, he said, he needs access to the eliminated channels.
�I signed up with Volia because they had these stations,� continued Sholokh. �They acted like a western-managed company when they first came on the scene. But they�ve changed their packages so often, I�m beginning to wonder.�
A year ago Volia cut another English-language channel from analog, moving the U.S.-based all-news CNN to digital.
At a Jan. 15 press conference, Volia President Serhy Boyko announced the results of a Volia customer survey taken in December. Boyko said 78.9 percent of customers who responded to a poll asked that the British, German, French and Chinese stations be exchanged for either Russian or Ukrainian stations. Boyko said about 25,000 people responded.
Volia controls about 80 percent of the cable market in Kyiv. Following a lengthy investigation, Ukraine�s Anti-Monopoly Committee last October slapped Volia with an Hr 17,000 fine for not notifying clients in a timely manner that it was ending broadcast of NTV Mir, a Russian channel. More than 530,000 written complaints from subscribers catalyzed the investigation.
Boyko said these changes were announced a month in advance, a period of time that would satisfy the committee. The current changes, he said, �are the results of the wishes of paying customers.�
Volia has more than 530,000 customers in Kyiv, most still on the analog system. The company has been working hard to convert the entire system to digital by 2006, hoping to get more Kyivans connected online. Only about 4,000 households currently subscribe to digital.
Sholokh is skeptical that paying customers asked to get fewer channels, even if the channels that were moved were foreign ones. He said no one asked for his opinion, although he admits he didn�t fill out and mail the questionnaire, which was printed on the back of Volia�s December bill.
Kyivans have reacted with a mixture of annoyance, anger and indifference.
�I think [Deutsche Welle] was a good contrast to the Ukrainian and Russian channels,� said Henri Bohnet, a diplomat at the German Embassy in Kyiv. He said many Germans and locals watched the station, which broadcast in both German and English, to get a different perspective on world events and improve their German.
�I�m a bit sad to hear that [it�ll be gone],� said Bohnet.
Boyko denied that the move was meant to soak affluent foreigners by making them pay more for the channels most useful to them.
�Why do foreigners even subscribe to the Sotsialny package?� he asked. �By definition, it�s for people who can�t afford a better package.�
�In other countries, a set-top box costs $200. We sell them for half that,� he added.
Property manager Iryna Wagai said the BBC was a valuable tool when she was learning English, and that it lent variety to the spectrum of news coverage available in Ukraine.
�I�m not a BBC patriot,� she said, �but it�s a good station, and by combining it with the other news stations, you get a good variety.�
�It�s a very bad thing that it�s gone.�
All Sholokh wants, he said, is an objective station that provides him with the latest news. He said he can�t get that from the channels left to him.
�When Saddam Hussein was caught, only the BBC carried it live,� he said. Ditto for Georgia�s �Rose Revolution� and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, he added.
�The BBC was first, and they were live,� he said. �The Ukrainian news didn�t have anything on these events until much later.�
�It may be just business,� he said, �but it�s bad business.�
Sholokh said he will probably shell out for digital cable, because he needs these stations to make a living. But he added that if things keep changing, he may go back to old-fashioned rabbit ears.
�May as well,� said Sholokh. �It�s free.�