Recently, the relations between the Russian television companies and telecommunications operators have drastically worsened. The major cause is that the TV companies have been unable to pay their debts. The Russian TV and radio broadcasting companies work under contracts signed with TV and radio companies. Last year, these companies did not pay $30.9m to the broadcasters. This is approximately equal to a free two-months use of the whole Russian broadcasting system. Since the beginning of 1994, the debt has reached $73m. The telecommunications operators, in turn, could not settle their accounts with the energy suppliers. During 1993, the tariffs on energy increased 120 times, whereas the tariffs on TV broadcasting, only 21 times. As a result, one of the economic chains that are now choking Russian industry hit TV companies. Some of the operators stopped getting the power needed to transmit TV and radio programmes and went off the air. The government has partially solved the problem by paying off 1993’s debts and releasing the telecommunications operators from debts and penalties to the state.
