Russian NTV broadcasters slam new management

Leading journalists and managers of Russia's popular NTV television warned the channel's controlling shareholder Gazprom that recent top-level management changes have brought the station "to the verge of crisis."

In an open letter to state-dominated natural gas giant Gazprom's Chairman Alexei Miller, the station's board, comprising its middlemanagers and leading broadcasters, warned that changes introduced last week meant the channel was "in danger of losing its position on the Russian television market."

They also asked for a meeting with Gazprom management "to sort out the current situation," having a day earlier voted a motion of no-confidence in the new management team.

NTV is Russia's third most-watched television channel nationwide and second most-watched in the Moscow region. It is regarded as exercising greater independence from government influence than the fully state-owned Channel One and Rossiya channel and was openly criticized by President Vladimir Putin for its coverage of the Moscow theater hostage crisis last October.

In a surprise move on Jan. 22, Gazprom announced it had dismissed the head of its media wing Boris Jordan and replaced him as NTV chief with Nikolai Shenkevich, a Gazprom official.

The decision was widely seen as intended to bring the channel to heel ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections due in December and in March 2004.

Creeping restrictions introduced by the Kremlin during Putin's first two years in office, either through court action or by limiting media access, continue to result in timid media coverage of current events.

The NTV board responded on Jan. 30 by passing a vote of no-confidence they said was triggered by Shenkevich's appointment of an inexperienced producer to head the station's programming.

NTV's chief news editor Tatyana Mitkova said that in talks with Shenkevich, personnel had been "shocked" at his "total inability" to explain his decisions.

"It was just feeble babble. In all my years in television, I've never heard anything like it," she said.

In their letter, the NTV board - which has an advisory rather than an executive capacity - said they "respect the shareholders' right to make decisions regarding operations, but we nevertheless believe that the latest appointments have brought NTV to the verge of a crisis."

Mitkova said they were "concerned that the new management will be unable to fulfill their obligations to the shareholders."

Gazprom introduced Jordan to head its media subsidiary Gazprom-Media in April 2001 after a successful takeover operation which wrested NTV from the grasp of media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky, a vocal critic of the Kremlin.

At the time it was feared he would stifle the station's independence, but NTV retained much of its appeal to viewers preferring a non-official line on public affairs.

On resigning, Jordan cited pressure from Gazprom, which owns 90 percent of the station, but refused to comment directly on the reasons for his departure, saying he did not want to "drag NTV into politics."

Liberal politician Boris Nemtsov, who last week said the management changes were politically motivated, warned Jan. 30 that "this clumsy reshuffling of the staff is destroying this talented station not by the day, but by the hour."

The changes were against the interests of Gazprom-Media shareholders and would "drastically diminish NTV's capitalization," infringing the rights of its shareholders as well as those of its viewers, he said.