Prime TV won't cease Russian broadcasts

Petru Jelihovschi, the director of the TV channel Prime, is dismissing reports that the station will soon cease to broadcast programs in Russian altogether. This comes in response to concerns published in a Russian-language daily over the channel's practice to cover retransmissions of Perviy Kanal shows with locally produced programs in Romanian, Info-Prim Neo reports. Jelihovschi has explained that the practice is in conformity with the legislation adopted in 2006, which requires broadcasters to scale up local production of programs in the official language. But he has assured that the Russian broadcasts and re-broadcasts will not disappear. “Such rumors do exist in society and they are promoted to benefit some people. Let me reassure our audience that there is no tendency to cease Russian-language programs”. “Being a channel that broadcasts nationwide, we are obliged to respect the legislation. Overall Prime channel preserves the scheduling of the Russian channel Perviy Kanal and will not modify the programming of the broadcasts radically”, said Jelihovschi. Jelihovschi added that the channel would further observe the legislation and would scale up local production in Romanian to meet the minimum requirements.