Shuster back at Inter channel

Driving the
move is Inter’s desire to increase its political broadcasting rating, the firm
announced in a press release. “Today, Savik Shuster’s program is the most popular
… talk show in the nation and its appearance will strengthen the position of
the channel,” admits Yevgeniy Kiselyov, who currently heads news production at
Inter.

Inter
earlier ran Canadian-Italian expat Shuster’s political talk show called Svoboda
Savika Shustera for a year.  

Russian
expat Kiselyov hosted a
government-friendly political talk show Velyka Polityka on Inter since
September 2009. In January 2013 he was replaced with Bezulyk’s more balanced
program. Spravedlyvist aired three times before being shut down.

However, Inter noted they will not fire
Bezulyk. “This decision was (in) the channel management’s competence. I and my
group were proposed to continue working for the channel and now we keep on
searching the format that will interest Inter,” Bezulyk is quoted as saying in
the press-release.   

Shuster
returns to Inter following former top-managers Yegor Benkendorf, who became the
channel’s head not long ago, and Hanna Bezliudna, who joined the channel’s
supervisory board.

This homecoming
took place soon after Ukrainian tycoon Dmitry Firtash bought the channel for a
reported $2.5 billion. Firtash’s Group DF bought Inter and other media outlets
from a company owned by multimillionaire Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, the nation’s
former deputy prime minister and security services chief.

Firtash
owns Inter together with presidential chief of staff Serhiy Lyovochkin, who
assured his ownership would not affect editorial policy and vowed to sign an
editorial agreement with the channel. “As a person who is part of the
government I guarantee my keeping out from the creative activity of the
journalists and the media managers,” the presidential website quotes him as
saying.

Before the
ownership transfer, Inter started granting fair amounts of air time to the
opposition, according to independent monitoring. Natalia Ligachova, chief
editor of Telekritika media watchdog, told the Kyiv Post that the new owner’s
arrival would likely change that.

In the
latest TV review, Spravedlyvist received slightly better ratings than Shuster’s
program.

Kyiv
Post staff writer Denis Rafalsky can be reached at rafalsky@kyivpost.com