The French telecommunications authority Arcom has forced the French operators of Eutelsat to black out the broadcasting on satellite of three Russian national public or publicly owned TV channels NTV, Russia 1, First channel in the packages of the 2 largest Russian Pay TVs, Tricolor and NTV+.
This is the biggest blow ever inflicted on the broadcasting of public or publicly attended television channels. Until now, the blackout of the 3 major Russian TV stations was excluded from the Pay TV packages.
In Russia there are 15 million households subscribed to Pay TV – Tricolor and NTV+: for many, in remote areas, such as Siberia and the Russian Far East, it was the only way to watch national Russian channels. In fact, now entire Russian regions will not be able to see the three major Russian generalist public or public participation TVs.
These channels were also seen in almost all the former Soviet republics, after the blocking ordered in some cases by the local authorities, only on Pay TV platforms – and we are talking about millions of unquantified subscribers, primarily in Kazakhstan where, according to some estimates , about 40% of the population watched them.
These packages were also seen in some EU member states – the Baltic states, Cyprus – even if the contracts did not provide for the broadcasting of the signal in the EU, but they were still visible, it was enough to have the original decoder.
The decision of the French communications authority is the response to the blackout, after the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, by the Russian Pay TVs of the western “all news” channels CNN, BBC World, Deutsche Welle, Euronews (in Russia), France 24, NHK World, RaiNews 24.
